


Murder on the Lakarian Train

by Steerpike13713



Series: Mr Bashir's Murder Mysteries [1]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Exile, Gen, M/M, Murder Mystery, Post-Revolution Cardassia, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-09-06 02:39:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16823476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steerpike13713/pseuds/Steerpike13713
Summary: Or - in which the author watches far too much Miss Fisher and experiments with re-creating a 1920s aesthetic in the 2370s.Elim Garak has, since his return to Cardassia, spent most of his time engaged in the tedious business of the civilian investigative services. However, after the disappearance of an elderly lady on the night train from Masad to Lakarian mutates into open murder, he is thrust into an investigation alongside mysterious Federation exile turned private detective Julian Bashir, a man who seems to have almost as many secrets as Garak himself. Can they uncover the truth behind Alin Gillot's death? And can Garak unravel some of the secrets around what the persistent Mr Bashir is doing on his planet and at his crime scenes in the first place?





	1. Chapter 1

It was said, although not on Cardassia, that once was happenstance, twice was coincidence and that three times could only be conspiracy. This, to Elim Garak’s mind, smacked of wilful naiveté and distortion of the facts. Coincidences happened. Coincidences happened every day, sometimes as often as five times together. He did not trust them, but he acknowledged them, however frustrating they might make the business of police work. And, as he was having cause to remember, it did not take more than two occasions to infer the beginnings of a pattern, however much Garak might wish he could dismiss it.

And so, when he reached the overnight train from Masad to Lakarian, on which an innocuous enough missing-persons case had suddenly mutated into open murder in the small hours of that afternoon, when the sun was still bright enough to blind and hot enough to test even Cardassian endurance, it was with a dawning sense of exhaustion and dread that he recognised Julian Bashir standing in the shadow of the train, deep in conversation with a rather beleaguered-looking Kalajev Tora and looking even more disgustingly pleased with himself than usual behind the dark glasses below the broad brim of his hat.

The Kalajev looked around as Garak approached, and started a little at the sight of Garak, blushing furiously – such a strange mammalian response, that, and one Ziyal was so very prone to, especially around Garak. He did his best to ignore it as he turned to look at Bashir. The man was only slightly less extravagantly turned-out than he had been at their last meeting, but in far less forgiving surroundings. As things stood, the white tunic and leggings were dusted with red sand, the azure and amethyst embroidery at collar and cuffs slightly travel-stained. Garak tried, and failed, to restrain a wince. White, again, and so much _colour_. It was well enough for the service classes, he knew, but a man of Bashir’s means should not need to dress like a shopkeeper in order to command attention.

“My _dear_ Mr Bashir,” he said, with a smile that did not show a hint of the aggravation he felt at finding Bashir at another crime-scene, whatever declarations he might have made at their last meeting about his intention to carry on meddling in matters better left for the state. “What a surprise, to meet you here! I had been under the impression that you intended to remain in Masad, at least for the foreseeable future.”

“It’s only a weekend away,” Bashir said cheerfully, the flicker of distaste that had flashed across his face at ‘mister’ nowhere to be seen now. “Jake has some paperwork to sort out with the Embassy to arrange for his stipend from whichever one of the Federation newsfeeds it is he works for…”

“The Federation News Service,” Ziyal piped up, and blushed even deeper, her eyes flicking to Garak. Garak bit down on the urge to frown. It would do Ziyal some good to get over this odd infatuation with a superior officer, especially one with such a past as Garak’s…all the same, Bashir’s journalist companion was hardly the best choice a young woman in Ziyal’s position might make, whatever pretensions towards egalitarianism the Ghemor government might have done its best to impose in the five years since the collapse of the previous government and the end of the Occupation on Bajor.

“That’s the one,” Bashir agreed. “Anyway, he’s just making the necessary arrangements to change his listed place of residence for them to send his stipend to. I decided to join him and make a weekend of it. Why the curiosity? You can’t expect me to believe you actually missed me…can you, Ajev Garak?”

“Certainly not,” Garak replied, with a smile every bit as insincere, although less blinding, than the one Bashir offered him. It was at times like this, he reflected, that Garak truly missed the Obsidian Order. Not the work – at least, not just the work. The Ghemor administration would never trust Tain’s protégé in intelligence work again so long as he lived, and that would always pain him, but his present career offered as many opportunities for investigation and interrogation, albeit under far stricter rules than Garak had ever laboured under during his spying days. But it was hard to avoid the thought that, had Garak still been Agent Regnar, second only to Enabran Tain in the hierarchy of the Obsidian Order, it would have been no great matter to eliminate any interfering Federation would-be investigators with a penchant for inserting themselves into his investigations. Even if Bashir was not, strictly speaking, Federation any more. It was one of the many things that did not quite add up about the man. Far too many, in fact.

Garak collected himself, and glanced around. “Kalajev, kindly escort Mr Bashir back to his compartment. I’m sure,” he added, with poisonous sweetness, “You must be eager to continue your journey in greater peace than you began it.”

“I would,” Bashir said, affecting a shrug and a tone that suggested that he most certainly would _not_ , “But unfortunately the late Madam Gillot’s daughter has already engaged my professional services.”

“Your…” Garak started.

“My _services_ , Ajev,” Bashir repeated. “That was rather the point of starting a business as a consulting detective in the first place. I don’t need the money-”

That was another of the things that didn’t add up about Bashir. The Federation was known to be open-handed with its citizens, yes, but the stipends offered to expatriates were hardly lavish enough to fund Bashir’s lifestyle, even if he had still been one of their citizens.

“-but I’m sure you understand why the younger Madam Gillot might be unwilling to trust entirely in the _proper_ authorities.”

Bashir’s eyes were glinting now, in a most unsettling way, and the asymmetrical collar of his tunic kept drawing Garak’s eyes down against his will to linger on the flash of a shapely collarbone as Bashir breathed. It was a crude and obvious distraction technique, which made it all the more irritating how effective the display truly was. It would have been easier if Garak knew for sure it was an attempt at distraction, but Bashir was giving every appearance of barely noticing his appearance, which Garak wasn’t sure whether to believe or not.

“Really, Mr Bashir,” Garak said, dragging his eyes up from that tempting hint of brown skin and fine jutting collarbones, “Must we always play this game? I’m afraid you really do allow your imagination to run away with you! I am as you see me, merely-”

“Plain, simple Ajev Garak?” Bashir said innocently. “That’s an ominous title for a simple man, ‘ajev’. You call your sun that, don’t you? Ra’ajev? The Watcher?”

Garak’s smile faded, just a fraction. He had been assuming this past month and more that Bashir’s Kardasi was only rudimentary – he had spoken through a translator throughout that entire first investigation he had imposed himself upon, and only now did Garak realise he could not feel the telltale buzz of the translator at work in his ear. It was not like him to miss a detail like that. He ought not to have done it. “You can hardly deny we workaday men a little theatricality. Besides, Ra’ajev was always, in Hebitian mythology, the friend of the investigator-”

“And the spy.” Bashir smiled again. He seemed to think he had scored a point. “Shall we, then, Ajev?”

“I do not believe, Mr Bashir, that I agreed to allow you to accompany me on this investigation,” Garak reminded him.

“And _I_ do not believe that I ever suggested I was waiting for your permission,” Bashir retorted. He shot a glance at Ziyal. “You’ll want to take Jake’s statement, of course – he was with me when we found the body.”

“ _You_ were the one to discover the late Madam Gillot’s body, Mr Bashir?” Garak said, raising an orbital ridge.

“Didn’t Ziyal mention that in her report?” Bashir asked, casting a look at Ziyal.

“It wasn’t a full report yet,” Ziyal said sheepishly, squinting against the sun. “All I needed to say was that we’d found the body.”

Bashir sighed, and removed his glasses, revealing great fathomless brown eyes, remarkable less for their colour than their depth, and impossibly distracting even so. “Here, take these, you’ll need them in this light. _I_ probably need them in this light, so you certainly do.”

“That’s…that’s kind of you, but I’m fine without,” Ziyal said quickly, straightening a little and putting her shoulders back. “I think I _should_ go and speak with Mr Sisko, though, Ajev,” she added, turning to Garak. “There are a few…details…I would like to clear up with him.”

“By all means, my dear,” Garak assured her, and was treated to a glowing smile in return. Foolish of him, to feel such pride in her when there were already so many barriers to her advancement, but then, she was the only one of his subordinates who had yet shown any real talent for investigative work, and sentiment had always been the worst of Garak’s vices. He watched her go for a moment, and then returned his attention to Bashir.

“As it happens, I do intend to inspect the Gillots’ compartment. You were the one who found Madam Gillot missing and her daughter drugged, I believe? In addition to discovering the body.”

“I’m not a suspect, am I?” Bashir asked, with a quick, sharp smile.

Garak smirked to himself as he mounted the folding steps onto the train itself. “You must admit, the circumstances are…suggestive.”

“The circumstances are nothing of the kind! I woke up overnight and smelt nerve gas. It’s not a smell you forget in a hurry, I’m sure you know. When I went to investigate, I found Gillot the younger lying there on the floor and no sign of her mother. Anyone could have done it.”

“And yet, you still knew where to find the body,” Garak pointed out. “Rather too precisely to be a coincidence – that water tower hasn’t been used in centuries.”

“Curious that the train stopped there at all, then,” Bashir retorted. “I would begin by interviewing the train crew, in your position.”

“Believe me, my dear Mr Bashir, I intend to.”

Another faint flicker of irritation across Bashir’s face – just the reminder of his disgrace? It had not taken long, after their first meeting, to unearth his official file. Doctor Julian Bashir, formerly of the Federation space station Deep Space Nine, the former Terok Nor, ceded to Bajor as part of the treaty the new government had forged to end the Occupation and make reparations for the damages inflicted. Garak was still rather sceptical of the peace with Bajor, but as recently as a year ago, Bashir had been the chief medical officer of a space station. And then, out of nowhere, he had been dishonourably discharged from Starfleet, stripped of medical license and citizenship both, and emigrated to Cardassia all in the space of perhaps two weeks. He was formally stateless, resident on Cardassia but not of it, a man with no real legal rights at all. Not that anyone would know it from the way he carried on.

The door to the train proper slid open, and Bashir slipped past Garak without pausing to ask permission. Garak was beginning to wonder if he might suffer from some sort of mental complaint that made him disregard these little niceties, or if it was just that Bashir’s manners were truly that bad.

“Jake should still be in our compartment,” Bashir was saying, “At the far end there. The Gillots were just along here…”

Garak blinked at the sight of the blackened hole in the compartment door. “…was that there when you found Madam Gillot’s daughter?”

Bashir had the grace to look slightly sheepish. “Ah. No. No, it wasn’t. The compartment door was locked – I had to break the lock open. With my shoe.”

“I think I should like to meet your shoemaker,” Garak managed, looking back at the door. Phaser fire. A phaser set on ‘disintegrate’, aimed at the lock. Very precise aim, too. Far too precise for a doctor who was only supposed to use his phaser in self-defence and who would not, in any case, have been allowed to keep his service phaser after his discharge.

“I’ll be sure to introduce you,” Bashir promised. “Now, if you’ll take a look. I’ll admit, I’m hardly an expert, but transporting someone onto a moving vehicle is always difficult, even when the vehicle is something the size of a starship. For a train, with a much smaller surface area and so narrow a margin of error…”

“I think we can safely conclude that this murder was most probably committed either by a passenger, or by someone who boarded the train during that unscheduled delay at the water tower,” Garak agreed. “How long a stop was it?”

“Perhaps five minutes.” Bashir was already by the window. “Now, _that_ is interesting.”

There was a smear of cobalt shoe-polish on the windowframe, and another smudge of it on the leather of the seat’s backboard, vivid even against the places where desert sand had blown in through the open window.

“I presume that this window was open when you entered the compartment to find the younger Madam Gillot?” Garak said, his eyes drifting back to Bashir.

“No.” Bashir’s lips thinned. “ _That_ was your people. I don’t have particularly high expectations of the civilian police, but you would think in the middle of the desert you could at least hope to be safe from the usual sort of evidence-tampering nonsense!”

It was hard to argue with the justice of that remark – Garak had made similar observations about his own men a hundred times or more – but Garak made the effort nonetheless. “As opposed to your own evidence-tampering, Mr Bashir?”

“ _My_ -!” Bashir started indignantly.

“You _did_ remove the box containing the late Gul Revok’s medication from the bathroom cupboard, the last time you inserted yourself into one of my investigation,” Garak reminded him. “The box which, as it transpired, contained a vital clue to _cracking_ that particular case.”

“And which your people managed to completely overlook after _two_ searches of the bathroom Revok died in!”

There was no fair answer for that one, and that particular oversight had _rankled_ when Bashir had revealed it. The pillbox had not been out of place, nor had it been markedly conspicuous. It had not appeared significant in any way, and there had been nothing to indicate it was anything but the proper prescription for the Gul’s well-documented heart condition, and Revok had not even taken a tablet that day. Garak still didn’t know how Bashir had determined that the pills were being used to conceal something far less savoury than medicine from a moment’s glance at the packaging, in a cupboard already brimming with every remedy a hypochondriac Gul could ask for. Even the coroner had been baffled by that one when he was finally presented with the evidence – it had taken in-depth chemical analysis to uncover the drug Revok’s wife had traded in, and Bashir had had only seconds at the crime scene unobserved – and so Garak could not attribute it to Bashir’s medical training. And then there was the matter of Bashir having smelt the nerve gas from the other end of the first-class carriage. ‘Anyone’ could not have done that, unless the human sense of smell was far sharper than their physiological data would suggest.

Instead of answering, Garak examined the rest of the compartment. It was in all respects quite typical of its kind – a luxurious first-class accommodation upholstered in glossy black canine leather with dully gleaming durasteel fittings, currently dusted with reddish sand but otherwise unremarkable – but its most recent occupants’ possessions were still scattered about the place as if Madam Gillot and her daughter had only stepped out for a breath of air. Garak had seen scenes like this before – had once been responsible for creating them – and whatever unease his subordinates may have felt at pawing over the last vestiges of the elder Madam Gillot’s life plagued him not at all.

The two long padded benches where the women had slept showed signs that they had been reclined on, the occupants either asleep or intending to be so. By the rounded dints in the leather at the far end of the compartment, both Madam Gillot and her daughter had slept with their heads to the outside wall, and the shawl thrown to the far end of one of the two benches looked as if it had been abruptly thrown off, when its owner had risen in a hurry.

“Do you know which bench was the late Madam Gillot’s?” Garak enquired, eyeing the scarf. It was well-made, but plain and clearly old, the sort of thing one might expect a respectable matron of limited means or frugal sentiments to wear.

“What- Oh, right. I found Gillot the younger at the foot of that one.” Bashir nodded to the bunk where the shawl lay abandoned. “She claims to have been attacked from behind – she was fetching a glass of water when their attackers came in.”

Garak hummed politely, but made no reply. There _was_ a broken glass and a wet stain on the floor in the appropriate place, and the sickly scent of nerve agent was thicker here. “Do you believe her?”

“She was definitely attacked directly,” Bashir said firmly. “The burns on her face are proof enough of that – people will insist on believing these nerve agents are _clean!_ I don’t know where they get it from, but she was lucky to escape without worse than burns. Shot of nerve gas from an aerosol directly to the mouth and nose, would be my guess, but I’d have her examined by a professional before committing that to any official report.”

“I was under the impression a professional had already examined her,” Garak said blandly.

Bashir’s expression became rather fixed. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Garak decided to let that go by. Another time, he promised himself, when he was less likely to find himself stonewalled. Perhaps…ah. Perhaps a more social connection might allow more opportunities to untangle what it was that had driven a bright young officer with the whole wide galaxy at his feet to disgrace and exile before he had held his post for more than five years. But, for the moment, that could wait.

“These scrape marks on the upholstery,” he murmured, leaning in to examine one more closely. Bashir followed, their faces very close together as they pored over the scraping of blue polish against the black leather. “You saw the body, doctor. Do these match the colour of the victim’s shoes?”

“Even I couldn’t miss those,” Bashir said, with a wry sort of lopsided grin.

“Rather a provocative choice, for a lady in her seventies. Indelicate, even.”

Bashir snorted. “Life is far too short to go around worrying about whether or not your shoes are the wrong colour,” he said, with a determined little nod. And then. “Any particular reason why?”

“Oh, simply an observation. You are still new to Cardassia,” Garak added, with as much chiding, professorial condescension as he could manage, “But you cannot have failed to notice that blue is a colour best left for the young. It appears rather louche on anyone over the age of fifty.”

“Ah. Associations with sexuality, I’m assuming?”

One day, Garak thought, he would learn what it was that made humans so very willing to speak of these things so brazenly.

“That is rather a simplified view of the matter,” he allowed.

“Simplified? But not inaccurate?”

“There are other associations with the colour,” Garak said, struggling to regain his composure and hoping that Bashir hadn’t noticed the slip, or the way Garak’s eyes had wandered to the vividly blue embroidery at Bashir’s collar. “But few of them entirely decorous.”

“Really? Good on Madam Gillot. Until…” Bashir’s eyes flicked back towards the open window. “I think I see what you’re getting at – those look like drag marks to me.”

“Precisely. Some of her hair has caught in the window closure, as well – at least, I presume this is hers.” Garak frowned, running a thumb over the thin white strands between his fingers. “That couldn’t have happened anywhere but the stop at the water-tower.”

Bashir reached over to examine the strands, and then looked up at the window again. “No. We were moving too fast for anyone to be able to stay on the roof, and the train is too high off the ground for anyone _on_ the ground to pull a body out, even before the train picked up enough speed to make it impossible on two counts.” He frowned. “And the window was closed when I came in. That’s odd. Why bother closing the window after himself? And these compartment doors – they don’t lock from the outside. Is there any other way in or out?”

Garak raised a brow-ridge. “The train crew carry master keys, in the event of an emergency on the train. And, of course, there is always the younger Madam Gillot.”

“Another reason to ask the crew a few questions.” Bashir’s mouth quirked. “But thank you for admitting the possibility – your men weren’t nearly as obliging. ‘That may be common in the Federation, Mr Bashir, but here on Cardassia, we prize our families above all else’,” he mimicked, in a startlingly accurate impression of one of Garak’s more hidebound juniors.

“Oh, I expect they were entirely aware of the possibility,” Garak replied, with a wide, false smile. “But consider the proprieties. Even the implication of a daughter murdering her own parent…it is hardly a notion for public consumption. It is only in these last few years that such crimes have even begun to be publicly reported.”

“How did you deal with them before?” Bashir asked, sliding down to look under the seats.

Garak shifted a little. “ _Privately_. It was only ever crimes against the state that were publicly prosecuted.”

“But there must be _some_ record-”

“There were _plenty_ of records, Mr Bashir,” Garak cut in. “But it was never the policy of the Cardassian state to reveal its private workings to every labourer off the street. Orthodox thought dictates that such a thing is entirely inimical to the Cardassian character, and it has always been the role of the state to _preserve_ that belief as far as possible.”

Bashir made an irritated noise in his throat. “A woman is dead. You’d think orthodoxy wouldn’t be as important as finding out why.”

Garak shot him a sideways look. “Disappointed in our brave new world, Mr Bashir?”

“Given what I had heard of Cardassia before I came here, it would be difficult for anything to disappoint me,” Bashir said carelessly, and then coloured, just a little. Yes, he had been stationed on Bajor, hadn’t he? And for all the Ghemor administration’s attempts to make amends, there was no love lost there. “Sorry,” Bashir said hastily, meeting Garak’s eyes. “I’ve been told I can be a bit of an idiot where alien cultures are concerned. More than once, actually.”

“You appear to have learnt enough of Cardassian customs to flout them at every opportunity,” Garak pointed out, his eyes once again wandering to that flash of brown collarbone, so clearly defined even where it disappeared beneath white silk and bright embroidery.

Bashir’s mouth twisted up in a smirk as he looked up and around from the floor. “I was here for most of a month before we met,” he reminded Garak. “I had to do something to fill in time, and background reading on my new home seemed like the best place to start.”

Reading was not the evening pursuit with which Bashir had been most concerned since he and Garak had crossed paths, from what Garak had heard of him, but it was hardly relevant now, and so Garak simply acknowledged it with one curt nod before rising to search the luggage racks overhead. They were not technically entitled to search the bags themselves, not without some good reason for suspicion, but they did not appear to have been interfered with. Both were fastened tightly, untouched.

Bashir, when he looked around, was examining the ventilation grille, slipping a finger through to test the gap between the inner grille and the outer.

“We will want to find the aerosol,” Bashir said idly. “Not that I’m expecting much direct evidence, but we will want to track the source. You would think neurocine would be harder to come by.”

Garak, who had come to much the same conclusion, nodded. “Well, there hardly seems to be anything left to see here, except that the late Madam Gillot had rather lurid tastes in reading material-” The book sitting at the end of the older woman’s bench was, in fact, one of the bloodier morality tales to have come out of the early Unification era, and one Garak remembered from his youth as a particularly bloodcurdling entry in that particular literary canon. The younger Madam Gillot, on the other hand, had chosen to pass the journey with the unexpurgated edition of _The Education of Glinn Rasan_. Entirely illegal, under the old regime, for ideological as much as obscenity reasons, which probably explained why young Madam Gillot had chosen to label the data rod containing it as _The Never-Ending Sacrifice_ instead, however much Garak might bristle at the insult to his favourite novel. Hardly conclusive evidence of either woman’s character, it was true, but Garak had the feeling that the woman who chose _The Mura Bird_ and the one who preferred the _Education_ could not have been the picture of domestic harmony.

“Kalajev Tora has already been asking questions,” Bashir said by way of agreement. “And I should see if Jake’s all right – he got a lungful of the nerve agent when we came in here, and neurocine is a lot more dangerous to humans than it is to Cardassians.”

“You do not appear unduly affected by it,” Garak couldn’t resist pointing out.

Bashir blinked. “…true, but there’s no harm in checking, if we’re going that way anyway.”

Garak’s eyes narrowed. _Lie_.

“ _We_ , Mr Bashir?”

Bashir shrugged. “You’ve already let me onto your crime scene. There’s no point in shutting me out now, is there? Besides. I’ve already seen the body. My doing it again can’t be _that_ much worse a violation of custom, can it?”

“Not strictly worse,” Garak allowed, “But certainly harder to justify. And considering you are in no way an official part of this investigation, Mr Bashir…”

“I see.” Bashir smiled again. He was prone to doing that when crossed. Garak hadn’t quite figured out why yet. “Sorry to have overstepped, then. I left Gillot the younger – just Madam Gillot now, I suppose – in one of the compartments farther along – is there any particular reason you’ve got so many people cramped in the second- and third-class carriages when there’s plenty of room up here?”

“Presumably they couldn’t pay for first-class passage,” Garak said blandly. “I find myself rather surprised you did – it would seem to go against those Federation principles of equal provision to all, or- Remind me, what was that rather quaint Earth saying?”

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” Bashir replied, smiling wryly. “Rather behind the times now, of course, since replicators came in, but the spirit of the thing is still there. And I can’t see how leaving perfectly good space sitting vacant and cramping people in like sardines elsewhere makes any sense at all. Anyway, Madam Gillot – the one that’s still alive – is asleep in another compartment, and I think she can wait until you’ve seen the body. It wasn’t a clean killing, this one. They never are, of course, but this one…someone truly _hated_ that old woman, I think, to have caused that much damage with no signs of a struggle.”

Garak tutted. “These modern murderers can be so indelicate.”

“Quite. Going by the burns around her mouth and nose, though, she got a more serious dose of neurocine than her daughter did. She’d have been unconscious for everything that followed, which is the nearest thing to a mercy in this whole case.”

“Is that your professional opinion?”

Bashir’s mouth quirked into something that might, if not for the look in his eyes, have passed for a smile. “I’m hardly in a position to give one of those,” he reminded Garak. “Given I don’t have a profession. The late Madam Gillot was quite clear on the subject of what a disgrace that is to the Federation, to have produced such a useless individual as me.”

“I was under the impression you had begun offering services as a private detective,” Garak said lightly.

Bashir shrugged. “Everyone needs a hobby.”

“Might I suggest gardening?” Garak retorted. “As an alternative to murder.”

“If I had to take up gardening there _would_ be a murder – every plant subjected to my care. I’m a- I’m no botanist.”

“Horticulturist,” Garak corrected, purely to annoy. And then, remembering his opportunity. “You spoke with Madam Gillot?”

“Only briefly.”

“What was your impression of her?”

Bashir frowned a little. “…I don’t much like speaking ill of the dead, but frankly, by the time we left the desert borderlands half the train was ready to kill her. As for serious motive…” his mouth twisted. “The only person I can think of is her poor daughter. And I wouldn’t have blamed her for a moment if she _had_ done it. She never let up for a moment – every second word out of her mouth was a criticism. Always on about how ungrateful her daughter was – as if she had anything to be grateful for, being treated like that. _Awful_ woman. Not that it makes it any better that she’s dead, but…”

“And, based on the available evidence, she is the only person on this train who seems to have had the opportunity. Tell me, Mr Bashir, do you believe that…” Garak checked his notes. “Ulani Gillot was responsible for her mother’s death?”

Bashir paused to consider this. “If the nature of Madam Gillot’s injuries had been different, she would have been my first suspect, but…I don’t see how she could be. There wasn’t enough time for that. Five minutes at a disused water-stop. That isn’t anything like enough time to drug her mother, climb out of the window, drag the body out after her, hang her, beat her, and then board the train again, lock the compartment door and dose herself, without being seen by any other passengers or train staff.” He stuck his hands in his tunic pockets, so the sleeves fell back to reveal slim, strong brown forearms and Garak had to drag his eyes away. “And I don’t see where she’d have got hold of neurocine, either. She couldn’t have done any of this single-handed, and we don’t have much clear proof that she did it at all. The killer might well have locked the door after himself, and then escaped via the window, and closed the window after him to prolong the effects of the gas. We’ve no hard proof either way.” Bashir scowled. “We need more data. And we won’t have that until we have the forensics or the testimony from the rest of the passengers. And I will want to sit in on those,” he added, “Because I don’t trust your blunderers not to just start twisting arms until they get a confession, and never mind if it matches up with the evidence.”

“What a flatteringly high opinion you have of our Cardassian policing methods, Mr Bashir!” Garak oozed, smarting both from the barb itself and, more guiltily, from the justice of it, considering where most of his juniors had got their experience. The civilian security services on Cardassia had never attracted the planet’s great thinkers. That was changing, by and by – Garak had great hopes of Tora Ziyal in particular – but even Garak could not say anything better of most of the h’ssti officers under his command but that they were loyal Cardassians of conventional mind, and likely no worse than many. “It has only been five years since the new force was founded, after all, one may make allowances for certain…old habits…still lingering.”

“If that’s an old habit, it’s one best broken,” Bashir said icily. “But…all right, yes, I see your point. Insulting them isn’t going to do anyone any good. But...look, service to the state is what matters, yes? As a proud Cardassian.”

“Above all else,” Garak agreed.

“Then please explain to me what sort of service it is to the Cardassian state to let a murderer walk free, and possibly kill again, simply to be able to call a case closed, having unjustly imprisoned a citizen of said state.”

Garak blinked. “…why, Mr Bashir, if you believe Cardassia so easily destabilised that one murderer-”

“But would it be just one murderer?” Bashir asked, raising his eyebrows. “If this is a matter of ordinary policy…”

“It isn’t,” Garak retorted, stung into honestly. “At least…not any longer. The Cardassia these men were trained and raised and moulded to serve is dead, Mr Bashir. Castellan Ghemor aims to build a new Cardassia, and we-”

“-workaday men?” Bashir suggested.

“Just so. We are left to make the best of this new world with the skills we have available to us.”

Bashir frowned. “…if the skills they have available extend only so far as beating up prisoners and accusing the nearest alien of murder whenever they find an unexplained corpse, I think policing isn’t the job for them.”

“…you mean to say they attempted to arrest you again?” Garak asked, with an affected, disapproving little tut. “I _do_ apologise – you must be incensed. In fact, if I were in your shoes, I’d grab a bottle of neurocine and gas me.”

“It’s far from the worst treatment I’ve ever received,” Bashir said easily. A little too easily, by the way his eyes flicked warily to Garak’s face a moment later. “But you can see why I’m the least bit sceptical of their deductive abilities, considering that I wasn’t even in the right _city_ when the first murder took place.”

“You were, however, quite willing to insert yourself onto a crime scene, whether you were wanted there or not, and proceeded to pocket what turned out to be a vital piece of evidence,” Garak reminded him.

“Which you had missed.”

Garak gritted his teeth. “Which we _had not yet found_.”

“And did not seem likely to find, under the circumstances. Besides, they didn’t have any such excuse, this time.”

“You were first on the scene,” Garak reminded him. “The second time you have interfered with an investigation, in fact. It’s a suggestive precedent.”

There was real bitterness on Bashir’s face now. “Lovely. I exist, and I am alien, therefore I have to be a serial killer simply using my position to avoid being caught.”

“I do not believe-”

“It’s fine, Ajev,” Bashir said, rather coolly. “Shall we press on?”

Kalajev Tora was already there when they reached the baggage car where the body was being held, as was Bashir’s journalist companion Jake Sisko, the two of them already deep in conversation.

“-bracelets, kind of a lot of them – I don’t remember what kind, exactly, but they looked valuable. I suppose she might’ve taken them off to sleep, but there’s no sign of anyone rummaging around in the rest of the compartment-”

“I’ll ask Madam Gillot when she wakes up,” Ziyal said, making a note of it. “You’re suggesting this was a murder for robbery?”

“I’m not,” Bashir put in as he and Garak drew level. “Someone beat the late Madam Gillot badly enough that I’d guess she has at least two fractures in the right arm alone. Her head was stove in from the back, too, though I’d lay money on it that she was already dead for most of those. You don’t do all that just to nick a few baubles.”

Sisko was already starting to look faintly greenish. “…thanks, Julian. You really know how to put a guy at ease.”

“It is one of my talents,” Bashir agreed, apparently heedless of the sarcasm. “By the by, Ajev. Cardassian physiology is hardly my area of expertise…” _Lie_ , Garak thought. A Starfleet doctor would have learnt enough of the basics to treat a captured prisoner, even with the Central Command and the Order’s efforts to keep all Cardassian physiological data as close a secret as possible, and Bashir had been involved with the whole disgraceful business of Aamin Marritza five years ago, if his file was in any way accurate. “…but I would put money on ‘hanging’ as the likely cause of death, from the look of the corpse when we found her.”

“I will be sure to take that under advisement,” Garak said. It was not precisely a lie, but he made it sound like one. “Kalajev, if you will join me…?”

It was an order, not a request, and Ziyal tucked her notebook away with one last nod at Sisko.

“Thank you for telling me about the argument with Mr Darel,” she said, “It- It might come in useful, if- if any of it turns up…”

“No problem,” Sisko replied, sounding just slightly strangled. “I, uh, hope it helps you catch the guy.”

“So you can write another story about it?” Ziyal asked, beaming.

“…story?” Bashir prodded, sounding quite alarmed now.

Sisko coughed. “I, uh, didn’t want to mention it, but…well, between articles I’ve been…I wrote up our first case together? You know, Holmes-and-Watson style. It’s just been finished – I’m sending it off to my editor next week.”

“…right.” Bashir nodded, looking faintly worried now, though he was still smiling. “Well, of course I hope your editor likes it, Jake, but you _are_ going to keep my name out of the published version?”

It was only a question for politeness’ sake, even Garak could tell that much.

Sisko frowned. “I…hadn’t been planning on it. I mean…I know it wasn’t what you were hoping for, but the next Sherlock Holmes isn’t exactly that bad a way to go down in history, right?”

“That’s making a lot of assumptions, isn’t it?” Bashir sounded amused. “And I…I’m flattered, really. But I don’t want to see my name in print anywhere anyone I know might read it, all right?”

“I…I guess? I mean, I was going to ask – didn’t want to invade your privacy or anything, but…” Sisko looked, if anything, even more confused now. So too was Garak, though he didn’t show it. Bashir had not struck him, in their brief acquaintance, as a man averse to the limelight. You didn’t talk, dress, _live_ the way he did unless you wanted to be noticed. His file, what Garak had seen of it, had borne this out – nominations for awards, decorations, prestigious papers, invitations to speak at a number of medical conferences, and all before the age of thirty-five – and yet here he was, insisting, politely but implacably, on his anonymity, at least within the Federation where Doctor Julian Bashir had made his name. Was this shame, then? Or had there been more trouble attendant on his leaving the Federation than either the file or the man had indicated?

Bashir’s smile grew a trifle closer to genuine. “I’m pleased to hear it. Sorry to interrupt, Kalajev,” he added, with a smile at Ziyal that Garak could only call ‘encouraging’.

“No, it’s- I should go,” Ziyal said, twisting her fingers together. “Thank you for the information – both of you,” she added, politely, with a small but real smile. Sometimes, Garak imagined what the world might have been had Tora Ziyal received his own education. Whatever his opinions on the new government of Cardassia might be, he was always grateful that she had not.

The body itself was under a sheet for decorum’s sake, and when Garak lifted it he was irritated, but not surprised, to discover that Bashir had been right. Garak’s medical expertise was limited, yes, but he had killed enough people, and seen enough killed, to know the difference between the bruising of a living body and that of a corpse. The woman was not more than half a day dead. She had likely still been alive when Bashir had entered the compartment to find her daughter prone on the floor and Madam Gillot herself gone from the compartment, the timing had been that tight. Garak was able to look down impartially at the burned face, the bruises, the crushed scales of the thick neck, but Ziyal looked as if she might be sick. She wasn’t, this time, but Garak took pity on her regardless.

“What was the argument Mr Sisko mentioned to you?” he asked, not looking away from the body. No sign of any sort of jewellery – they would need to ask Ulani Gillot about that, once she’d woken – and heavy bruising around the neck, consistent with her still being alive when hanged. The burns, however, were what interested Garak more. A shame that Bashir was still so insistent on denying his original profession, because Garak’s limited knowledge of matters medical meant that any conclusion he drew would only be guesswork. He could not say whether it was the neurocine or the hanging that had finished her.

Ziyal blinked, and glanced down at her pad. “Ah- Madam Gillot – the dead one –had some sort of disagreement with one of the passengers. A Mr Darel. Apparently an old grudge, since all he had to do was lay eyes on her.”

“Funny,” Garak said, as lightly as he was able. “Bashir didn’t mention that.”

Ziyal nodded, perhaps a trifle too eagerly. “He wasn’t there. Jake- Mr Sisko was, but Bashir didn’t join him in the dining car until after Mr Darel had left.”

“I see.”

No sign of blood or tissue under her Madam Gillot’s claws, no sign of a struggle. She’d been unable or unwilling to fight back the whole time. Rope fibres caught in the scales of her neck-ridges, but they’d already known to expect those. The rest, Garak could not determine without disturbing evidence that would need to be passed on to the forensic office back in Masad. He laid the sheet back over the body, and straightened up. It seemed it was time to start with the witnesses, and see which ones’ stories failed to tally with the picture he had already drawn. This was not, in itself, proof of guilt – he was as capable of being wrong as anyone, although perhaps not _quite_ as capable as some of his juniors – but it would provide him, at least, with a place to start. It was why he had insisted on examining the scene first, why he would have liked to insist on seeing the water-tower where the body had been found, had the desert winds not swept half his evidence away with the morning’s deposits of sand.

“Did Mr Sisko mention the nature of this disagreement?” he asked, civil as the old sleg to the vole in the folk-tale. _Come and sit in my mouth, little one, and take the shade while you may,_ a wicked voice in the back of his mind whispered, but what teeth Garak still possessed were no threat to Ziyal.

“No. Only that they seemed to hate the sight of each other.”

“We shall have to speak to Mr Darel in person, then,” Garak said, with a decisive little nod, and stepped away from the body. “Sisko first, I think. His memory might yet have improved.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ziyal shudder, just a little, and told himself firmly that _that_ only showed good sense.

When he emerged once again from the baggage car, it was to find Bashir and Sisko sharing much the same conference that Garak had just had with Ziyal.

“-don’t know,” Sisko was saying, frowning. “He- I don’t think he was _afraid_ of her, if that makes sense. He just hated her. She didn’t seem to hate him – at least, no more than she seemed to hate the rest of us.” His mouth twisted a little at that, and Bashir smiled ruefully back.

“It’s a start, at least,” he said, clasping Sisko’s shoulder in a gesture that would, between Cardassians, have been a clear proof of intimacy, but which the other species of the quadrant seemed to have universally agreed upon as a sign of masculine camaraderie, inconvenient beings that they were. “So,” he added, turning to Garak. “I believe you said the interrogation of the train crew would be next?”

Garak raised a brow-ridge. “I did. Although, I do not believe I indicated that _you_ would be participating. Kalajev, if you would _kindly_ see Messrs Bashir and Sisko back to their compartment…”

“I believe,” Bashir said, with a look in his eyes that Garak was already beginning to tell meant trouble, “That we can find our own way.”


	2. Chapter 2

The interrogations of the train crew did not, alas, produce an obvious murderer, but were not entirely unproductive. The crew themselves were, all of them, men of Garak’s own age, relics of the old Cardassia, who now shifted to find work where they could. Garak counted three former glinns and one man who claimed to have been a Gul during the Occupation of Bajor, now cashiered and finding work where he could. Bashir, no doubt, would have thought that suspicious. Garak did not. It was the common lot of men of their sort, he knew, and only luck had kept him from a similarly precipitous decline. An Ajev of the civilian investigative service held no great standing in Cardassian society even now, but considering Garak had spent the two years before his return to Cardassia hemming trousers for a living, he was inclined to congratulate himself on his own good fortune.

The story he heard repeated half a dozen times over, with enough variation between tellings to make the thing believable, was simple. The emergency alarm had been sounded, and the train had stopped for five minutes, conveniently by an old water-tower, of the sort that had been used during desert crossings before water could be easily replicated. Train crew had responded to the alarm, but found the ‘emergency’ had been nothing but a misbehaving child and thus returned to their ordinary rounds none the wiser to what must have been happening just a few compartments away. The child, Garak noted with interest, had been one Olen Darel, the son of the Mr Darel who had held such an inexplicable grudge against the late Madam Gillot. Mr Darel had been away from the carriage when they reached the boy, had only returned at the end of those five minutes and had seemed, said the guard, rather flustered to find them there. It was hardly damning evidence, but it would have been enough for a skilled conservator, if only those still existed. And yet…Bashir’s voice sounded again in the back of his mind. What service was it to Cardassia…? It would restore order, which was, after all, most of the point. And most murderers did not kill more than once. The accused would undoubtedly be guilty of _something_. This was not like the work of the Order, the fate of all Cardassia did not turn on who had murdered one thoroughly unpleasant old woman from Masad. All the same. It rankled, the thought of acting on such flimsy proofs as these. It would be sloppy, untidy, and that was an accusation Garak could never bear. He was many things, few of them creditable, but one of them had always been _thorough_. And he needed to speak to Mr Darel. But first, Ulani Gillot.

Madam Gillot the younger had, following her ordeal, been given a place in one of the other empty first-class compartments. The burns on her face had been treated – although _not_ by the only doctor travelling first-class on this particular train – and she seemed more numbed by her experience than anything else. Garak settled himself on the bench across from her, affecting to look grave.

“Madam Ulani Gillot, I believe?” he said pleasantly.

Ulani Gillot nodded jerkily. She was too well-bred for open emotionalism, Garak noted with approval, but her fingers were twitching, just slightly, where they were laced together in front of her, and her eyes were wide and guileless.

“This must be, I know, a terrible time for you,” he said smoothly, leaning forward in a way that a thousand much more hardened subjects had been led to believe was confiding. “But I must ask…do you know of anyone who might have wished your mother harm?”

Madam Gillot swallowed, and shook her head. “No. Mother was…difficult…but _murder_ -” She looked, for a moment, as if she might be sick. A ploy? No. Wide eyes and twitching fingers were both ordinary elements of a deception, but they were common enough in true displays of grief, and an interrogator soon learnt to tell the difference. Ulani Gillot had not wanted her mother dead. And the nature of the old woman’s injuries rather ruled out an accidental killing. The presumption of innocence was almost always misplaced, but deliberate murder seemed unlikely. “I _cannot_ ,” Ulani Gillot said, in a voice that hardly shook at all. “Imagine what reason anyone could have to _kill_ my mother.”

The general consensus from the rest of the train had been that the elder Madam Gillot’s personality alone would have accounted for it, but then, the same had been said of Garak more than once before.

“I see.” Garak paused, letting the silence spin itself out. Silence was the interrogator’s greatest tool. People would say things to fill a silence that even the harshest of tortures would not draw out of them. Men had confessed treason before, to escape the silence and the pressure of Garak’s eyes on them. Ulani Gillot folded like wet paper.

“I- I offered to pay that man – Ba’cir or something like that, the human – to find out what happened. I- I knew what Mother could be like better than anyone, and- and sometimes I almost wanted to hurt her myself. She could be- I was- What _point_ was there to it?”

“You really have no notion of anyone who might have wished her harm?” Garak probed, once it seemed Gillot had talked herself out. He considered naming Darel, and seeing how fast she diverted to blame him once he did, but held his peace, watching.

“No.” She managed a very faint smile. “Unless you mean to ask for everyone she might ever have offended in passing, in which case the list would encompass half of Cardassia. Mother does not…did not…make friends easily.”

There was _something_ there. Something Ulani Gillot knew, but did not wish to tell him. Garak could very nearly _smell_ it now.

“I see. Perhaps some rokassa, then, to settle your nerves? You’ve had a difficult night.”

Gillot did not do anything so blatant as swallow, but her eyes lingered on Garak’s hands. A sensible young woman, clearly, not to have shed her reservations about the servants of the State so quickly. “No. No, thank you. There aren’t any replicators in this compartment, the train crew-”

“Ah, yes. My apologies, I wasn’t aware,” Garak lied. The former Gul had found that element of his duties particularly wearisome, by all accounts. Garak could not say he blamed the man, if Madam Gillot the elder had been as unbearable as every report he had yet received had made her sound. “Well, far be it from me to disturb them,” he added, letting a trace of the service-class accent of his boyhood seep back into his voice and watching the way Ulani Gillot’s posture relaxed, just a little, at the sound of it. “I suppose it was too much to hope for that there would be an obvious motive,” he said idly. “Many murders are committed for what may seem like no reason at all.”

“…but then it could be anyone!”

“Yes,” Garak lied. “I imagine it could. Which is why it is of such vital importance that you share any detail, any old grudge, any passing jibe, that might offer an excuse for such a crime. You may,” he added hastily, remembering just how unpopular the elder Madam Gillot had been, “Exclude from this telling anyone who was not on this train tonight.”

It was not precisely an informative list. Madam Gillot the elder had snapped at half the train crew for one reason or another, derided the loose morals of a young married couple who had been a little too obvious in their mutual affections, denounced the current government so incautiously that under the old regime her death might be taken as a mercy to keep the Order from answering her complaints, had loudly proclaimed the worthlessness of the Federation and the uselessness of its citizens when sitting down to dinner in the same dining car as Bashir and Sisko, and, of course, there was Mr Darel. Madam Gillot did not know the cause of his grudge, she said, but he had reacted so strongly to the sight of her mother in the dining car that she could not entirely discount it. Garak read the flicker of the eye, the slight stiffening of the vowels as she claimed ignorance, and swallowed a smile. There was _something_ there, something not to the mother’s credit, unless Garak missed his guess.

He might have pressed further, but…but most of his old tricks were against the new procedure, and a fair few of them against the newly-drafted laws put in place with the establishment of the new investigative service. Besides. There was no way for Madam Gillot to have carried out the murder without the use of a teleporter, and to teleport from stationary in the desert to aboard a fast-moving train was a manoeuvre more difficult and more delicate than threading a needle with a phaser-shot. According to her files, Ulani Gillot was a filing clerk by trade – hardly a profession that would account for such dizzying technical skill as such a manoeuvre would require. There was little enough to be gained in badgering an obvious innocent for further facts, not with other subjects to be interviewed – he wanted to speak to Darel in particular, and Sisko after him.

“I see,” he said, when Ulani Gillot finally stopped her recitation, glancing down at his notes. “Thank you for your cooperation, Madam. We shall be sure to contact you, in the event of any further questions arising.”

“Then- I’m free to go?” Gillot asked, with a nervous look at the door. It was a common enough response, in the face of Garak’s expertise. The Obsidian Order’s legacy would not be so easily wiped away.

“Go?” Garak said blandly, with a faint facetious smile. “This is _your_ compartment, Madam Gillot. I, however, must take my leave. Good evening to you.”

One great benefit of the first-class carriage, it confined all his suspects close enough for convenience. Mr Darel was just two doors down from Madam Gillot’s new carriage. Of course, when Garak opened the door after two unanswered knocks, he found the compartment empty but for the boy Olen Darel, who was stretched out half-under one of the bunks, examining something on its underside. At Garak’s inquiry, the boy pointed at the opposite compartment, whose door stood slightly open. The opposite compartment which belonged, Garak recalled, with a sort of exasperated resignation, to the Federation party.

“-really can’t thank you enough,” Bashir was saying as Garak approached the door, pausing outside out of long habit and straining his ears to listen. “It’s the smell of it, you know? Or- No, maybe you don’t. But you can’t really be easy anywhere with the smell of neurocine in the air, even if it isn’t enough to do any real damage. I haven’t been able to take a proper breath since Madam Gillot went missing.”

“Have they found her yet?” said a second voice – Darel, Garak presumed. The accent was respectably merchant-class, with something of the lilting note of the northern continent around the vowels.

“They found her body,” Bashir said, “They’re saying it was murder.” A pause, and then. “I’m sorry – you and Madam Gillot seem to have been old acquaintances.”

“We were hardly close,” Darel said, more clipped now. “And…the daughter, she is of age?”

“I believe so.” There was just a trace of confusion in Bashir’s tone. Real or feigned, Garak couldn’t tell. How much occasion had Bashir had to know of the calamity the loss of their last remaining parent could be to an underage orphan?

“There is at least that small consolation for her, then.”

Garak pushed open the door. “Mr Darel, I believe?” he said, with a wide and friendly smile. “My name is Garak. I see you have met Mr Bashir.”

Bashir smiled back at Garak from his place by the window, wide and bright and blinding in its innocent good nature. Garak distrusted that smile at once.

“Mr Darel was kind enough to help me with the window,” Bashir said, nodding to it. “Humans really are at something of a disadvantage when it comes to brute strength.”

“When it comes to many things, apparently,” Darel muttered. Bashir was still smiling away as if he hadn’t heard a word of it, though there was no way his hearing, so much sharper than a Cardassian’s, hadn’t picked it up.

“If you will excuse us, Mr Bashir,” Garak said pleasantly, pretending _he_ hadn’t heard either, “I must…borrow…Mr Darel for a moment. We have a few questions we need to ask him.”

Now, Darel looked nervous. That was not, in and of itself, incriminating, but Garak noted it regardless. He didn’t ask questions. You didn’t, when the authorities wanted to speak to you. Anything you said could, and would, be used against you before an archon. So too would your silence, in the old days, but that was, at least on paper, no longer common practice.

“As you like,” Bashir replied, apparently carelessly. “Or- Actually, why don’t you take the compartment? All this isn’t really a topic for young Olen’s ears.”

Garak blinked at him. Bashir smiled sunnily back. Garak paused, and conceded. This would, it was true, be better done out of the child’s earshot.

“Thank you, Mr Bashir.” He turned to Darel. “I understand that yours was the compartment in which the emergency alarm was sounded?”

“It was,” Darel said. His eyes flickered from Garak to the door and back again. He cleared his throat. “And it was very wrong of Olen, of course, to play with the emergency alarm like that. I have told him-”

“I am _also_ informed,” Garak went on, as if he hadn’t heard, “That you were absent from the compartment when train crew arrived.”

“I was, yes.” Darel was now starting to look distinctly harried. His eyes flickered once again from Garak to the door, and focused in on Bashir, who was quietly gathering together a small pile of books. Garak turned to look too.

Bashir flashed a brief, bright smile. “Just leaving,” he said, unrepentant.

Garak gave him a very level look, and then turned back to Darel. “Where were you when the train had its unscheduled stop at the water-tower?”

“In the dining car.”

“And what, precisely, were you doing there?”

Darel swallowed, just a little, but enough for Garak’s eyes to catch. Enough for Bashir, too, unless Garak missed his guess. “I- was fetching a larish pastry, for Olen. He wanted to hear more about the show in Lakarian, and I thought it might quiet him.”

“Show?” Garak probed.

Darel spread his hands. “I’m not normally one for the theatre, but we’d won free tickets for the re-opening of the Zarale Auditorium, and I thought it might be good for Olen. Educational.”

Bashir chose that moment to re-join the conversation, straightening up with his books in his arms. “Thank you for the window, Mr Darel, you’ve been a great help,” he said, smiling widely. “Ajev. I’ll get out of your hair now, shall I? Or- No, what is the saying here-”

“We say ‘get out from under your scales’,” Garak supplied. Honestly, sometimes he wondered what Bashir was doing there at all. He could be so short-sighted, so stupid, even, in a puppyish sort of way- Except that he had seemed puppyish, too, when Garak had seen him around Madam Revok, so cheerful and friendly and obliging, and all the time Bashir had known her for a murderer, and coldly prepared to hand her in to face the lethal justice of a Cardassian court. _Be careful with this one_ , said the cold voice in the back of Garak’s head that still sounded, in his head, like Tain’s. As if Garak had needed the reminder.

“Under your scales…yes, I could see that. Thank you, Ajev.”

Bashir brushed past Garak on his way out of the compartment, and Garak thought he felt a hand flicker into his pocket – Bashir was good, but Garak was better – before Bashir disappeared out of the compartment door, which slid shut behind him. Garak turned to Mr Darel again once he was gone.

“I was given to understand you and the late Madam Gillot had some…history…between you.”

“We do. None of it good.” Darel’s jaw was set, his expression mulish. He looked, for the first time, angry. “Do you mean to accuse me, _Ajev_?”

“I?” Garak asked, pressing a hand to his breastbone, just to the left of his chula, and adopting a wounded look. “No. Oh, no. From what I have heard, half the train had reason to want Madam Gillot dead before you had so much as left Masad. However, I was led to believe that your grudge went back rather farther than one afternoon’s unpleasant acquaintance?”

Darel paused. “Well, I’ve got nothing to hide. Yes, I knew her. Hated her. Doesn’t mean I’d do anything about it, not that I imagine that will mean much, if you decide I did it.”

“It is not my place to ‘decide’ who the guilty are, Mr Darel.” Garak smiled, quick and tight, slipping a hand into the pocket Bashir had fumbled. There was something there that hadn’t been there before, something papery... “How, precisely, did you know Madam Darel?”

A dark look passed across Darel’s face. “My wife,” he said grimly. “Olen’s mother. She was…radical…in her views. Not treasonous,” he added hastily. Even now the state against which the late Madam Darel might have offended was gone, treason was an accusation no Cardassian would wish to bear. “But not- not convinced, in her heart, of the actions of the state. She’d been born on Bajor, and her views on the Occupation were…not those of the previous government.”

“I see.”

“Madam Gillot was…this was while Olen was still in the shell. She was Siana’s superior at the Lakarian State Hospital. Siana was…outspoken, in her views. Perhaps too outspoken.”

“She was reported.”

“Yes.” Darel’s face twisted. “The Central Command fell just a month later, but that was too late for my Siana. They dragged her out of her bed in the light of day, into the street – I never saw her again. They killed her. I know they killed her. And not a week later, Alin Gillot was promoted to Chief of Nursing at the Lakarian State Hospital, and I saw her wearing Siana’s bracelet. The same one she’d been wearing when-” He broke off, voice cracking. “I know Alin Gillot reported her. I know it. My Siana died in some little room somewhere, at the hands of some-” He looked up, and the look in his face was terrible. “I wonder, were you the one who did it, Ajev? It’s so hard to know. So many of the butchers from those days were protected when the Obsidian Order wiped all their records. There’s no way we’ll ever be sure of having caught them all.”

“No,” Garak said, his heart sinking. “…no. I was…far from Cardassia, that year.”

Even if he had not been exiled, Tain’s right hand would not have been used for the interrogation or murder of a nurse from Lakarian who had been foolish enough to speak openly of such a world as the Ghemor administration now aspired to. There was no reason for Garak to feel so much as a twinge of guilt about the late Siana Darel and so he did not. He would not.

“…I suppose I’m a fool to tell you all that,” Darel said quietly. “But there it is. Do what you like with it. Your sort always do.”

It was another few minutes before the interrogation was complete, of course, and the moment Darel had returned to his own compartment to check on his son, Garak slipped a hand into his pocket and withdrew the paper Bashir had left there. It read:

_‘The son didn’t sound the alarm. Will prove this if you’ll let me. Regards, J.B.’_

Garak shook his head, half-disbelieving, but at the same time not surprised in the least. Bashir had something of the quality of a natural disaster, the way he swept in and left Garak’s orderly life in disarray, and- and he might just be the most interesting thing that had happened to Garak since his return to Cardassia in the general amnesty of five years past. Small wonder he was so distracted.

He found Bashir with Sisko, which he might have predicted. Rather less predictable were the sounds of a quiet argument as Garak approached the compartment’s half-open door.

“-don’t even let people call you ‘doctor’ anymore. I know something’s up, Julian! You can tell me, if you’re in trouble, or-”

“What sort of trouble do you imagine I might be in?” Bashir said facetiously. “ _I’m_ not the one who just got murdered. Or I don’t think I am. You would tell me if I were a ghost, wouldn’t you, Jake?”

“…if you were a ghost, you wouldn’t need told.”

“Not necessarily. I can lend you a few novels that rely on that particular twist, if you’re interested.”

“Not now you’ve told me the twist, I’m not. And I _know_ you’re trying to distract me!”

“Can’t get anything past you, can I? Now. The alarm system is compartment-specific, which is how they found young Olen Darel so quickly. Obviously, he didn’t do it-”

“Well, yeah, kid’s what, three?”

“Five, if I have my maths right. One of the first hatchlings of the new Cardassia. There should probably be some sort of name for that generation…anyway. If that stop at the water-tower was a coincidence, I’ll eat my hat. This was _planned_. And the water-tower…well, the obvious advantage might be the water, but it’s also a landmark for a transporter.”

“…you think whoever it was transported themselves away?”

“I don’t know yet. I have a hypothesis, but I can’t prove it yet.”

Garak paused, and pushed the door open. “I was given to understand that you meant to prove this ‘hypothesis’,” he said dryly. “Indeed, you promised that you could.”

“And I will.” Bashir smiled. “You won’t find many people who’d consider me fit to care for children, but someone had to keep an eye on young Olen while you were interrogating his father.”

“A child is hardly a reliable witness, Mr Bashir.”

“Not automatically an unreliable one, though,” Bashir pointed out. “Besides. Children lie, but not generally when they’ve already been punished. And you can’t tell me you didn’t suspect the timing.”

“It was…suggestive…” Garak allowed. The obvious suspect in this case was Darel. Granted, the obvious suspect was rarely the right one, but that had been in intelligence work. In his five years investigating the grubby little crimes of the civilian population, he had seen more obvious cases than he cared to remember, and so few that had posed any real challenge.

“Well, exactly. But Darel wasn’t in his compartment at the time, and while Olen being responsible is the obvious explanation, that doesn’t necessarily make it the truth.”

“I take it you have another explanation?”

“Have you _looked_ at the emergency alarm, Ajev?” Bashir demanded. “It’s fairly highly-placed on the wall. A healthy six-year-old might jump for it, but I’m not at all sure it’s within reach of one. And Olen Darel is small even for his age, and not the strongest or the most active child I’ve ever encountered.” He shrugged. “It’s not conclusive on its own, so I took the liberty of taking prints.”

“….you did what?”

“Prints, Ajev! Fingerprinting! Not as useful here on Cardassia as on planets with a higher mammalian population, but it yielded some interesting information. Look at this.”

Bashir drew a fold-out PADD from his pocket, and held it out. “Cardassians don’t produce skin oils in the same way as humans do, and you don’t sweat either, which is probably why fingerprinting never really took off as a forensic tool over here. Fortunately, most adult Cardassians use some form of scale-softening oil, particularly on their hands. I assumed it was worth a shot.”

“…I see. And your conclusions, Mr Bashir?”

“See for yourself,” Bashir replied, pressing the PADD into Garak’s hands. “There is a recent print. No exact prints, of course, since Cardassians don’t have those either, but the size alone is enough to confirm it wasn’t Olen Darel that pressed that button.”

When Garak looked…yes, there it was. Outlined in dark powder, the outline of a finger-pad, a large black smudge. Far too large for a child’s finger, and from the wrong angle for it to have been a jump from below.

“Were you able to identify the brand of scale-oil?” he asked, taking refuge in practicalities.

Bashir shook his head. “You can try, of course. I don’t know how much of any of these scale-moisturising oils will linger in any recognisable form. It was a long enough shot getting a usable print from it to identify our perpetrator as an adult.”

“…what would this have done for a human?” Garak asked, looking over at Bashir.

Bashir offered a rueful smile. “You know about mammalian fingerprints? We develop them in the womb. No two humans have the same prints, not even identical twins. They’ve been used to identify specific humans – and a fair few other mammalian species – for centuries, in legal proceedings.”

“…I see.”

It had not come up in his previous work. Many things had not. For the most part, Garak’s information-gathering had rarely relied on such blatant, physical cues. It was not even so very useful in his current line of work, but…still.

“Darel himself could have sounded the alarm before he left the compartment, of course…” Garak mused.

“He could,” Julian allowed. “Which was why I asked Olen about it.”

Garak raised his brow-ridges. “And what insights did young Olen have to offer?”

“He claimed a guard had done it,” Julian said, and shrugged. “A young man. That more or less tallied with what Darel said when I asked about the disturbance, but since I have yet to see a single guard under the age of fifty-”

“No, there was one,” Sisko put in. “How old did Olen say he looked?”

“Old,” Julian admitted, with a rueful smile. “Maybe even as old as thirty. ‘Not as old as you, though, Mister’, were his exact words, which, leaving aside the blow to my ego- You recognise the description?”

Sisko was nodding. “Yeah! I mean, I saw him in the corridor once in passing. Youngish, right? Maybe mid-twenties? Good-looking, too – you really didn’t notice him? You’re normally the first to notice these things, especially if they’re pretty.”

“Regrettably not,” Bashir admitted, “It would make all our jobs a lot easier if I had. So, Ajev. We have a misplaced fingerprint, a guard who was either never employed or who disappeared before your interrogations began, a dead body and a great deal of missing jewellery. What do you make of it?”

There was something unfathomably irritating, Garak reflected, about being prompted as if he were still in the schoolroom by a man who could not be very much more than half his age.

“ _Really_ , Mr Bashir,” he replied, in a tone of the most perfect condescension he could muster. “I am quite sure you hardly need rely on my humble contributions to draw a conclusion from the evidence before you.”

“Maybe not,” Bashir acknowledged, offering a sly, sideways grin that looked a lot more genuine than the sunny smile he’d worn when dealing with Darel. “But I’d like to hear it anyway.”

Garak smiled widely. “After you, then, Mr Bashir.”

Bashir frowned, and then said. “I cannot believe the murderer is still on the train.”

“ _Very_ good! For an amateur, you are picking this up remarkably well!”

That particular barb found its mark, Garak saw with satisfaction, but all at once Bashir was controlled again. He was so _very_ controlled. It was almost Cardassian, almost proper, except for all the ways in which Bashir could not be less proper or less Cardassian if he tried – and Garak suspected he _was_ trying.

“You’ve scanned for transporter traces, haven’t you?” Bashir asked, all business once again.

“In the desert?” Garak raised his brow-ridges. “Sand is notoriously poor at retaining energy signatures, a fact you might have thought to research. I can order a scan at the water-tower, but whatever traces might remain in the topmost layer of sand will be scattered across half the desert by now.”

“…of course it is.” Bashir rubbed his eyes. “Well, it would hardly be worth interfering if there weren’t _some_ difficulties.”

“Interference that no-one asked of you and which you offered of your own accord,” Garak pointed out, his eyes flicking down to the well-formed bow of Bashir’s mouth.

“As I have told you, Ajev, Madam Gillot requested that I-”

“ _Requested_ indeed, Mr Bashir. I suppose I am to believe that she simply approached you out of the blue? With no encouragement from yourself. Rather a peculiar decision for a Cardassian woman to make, begging the help of an alien with no particular connection to her or her mother-”

“Ajev! Ajev Garak!”

It was Ziyal’s voice, and Garak looked around hurriedly, noticing for the first time how close to Bashir he stood, and how much closer still their heads had bent together as they talked.

Ziyal was standing there in the doorway, looking more than usually worried. “Oh- I’m sorry for interrupting,” she added hastily, looking from Garak to Bashir and back again.

“Not at all,” Bashir said easily, smiling at her. Garak was beginning to really resent that smile. “I was just explaining my theory of our murderer’s probable escape route. And, Ajev,” he added, glancing back at Garak, “If Madam Gillot happened to recognise my talents-”

“Completely untrained and outside the authority of the Cardassian State though they may be.”

“You said yourself that the State apparatus is still new to dealing with such matters with any intention of apprehending the real criminal rather than simply finding a politically convenient scapegoat-”

“If you two have a moment to spare from your _discussion_ ,” Ziyal put in, sounding truly annoyed now for the first time. “The scanning parties have come back, Ajev, and they would like to talk to you about a lost child!”

That caught Garak’s attention.

“A _child_?” Bashir repeated, astonished.

Ziyal nodded, her eyes flicking back to Garak. “Will you come, sir?” she asked, with an abrupt return to formality.

“…yes,” Garak allowed. “I think I will. Mr Sisko. Mr Bashir.”

Of course, it was too much to hope that he might be able to get rid of Bashir, who followed them out into the corridor with Sisko trailing further behind, still taking frantic notes and looking, Garak thought, rather pleased with himself.

“-they found her walking the rail line,” Ziyal was saying, with quite commendable briskness. “She had a handkerchief full of Madam Gillot’s missing valuables – all of them, actually. I checked, and that’s the full list accounted for.”

“Sorry,” Sisko put in, “But I thought sand didn’t pick up transporter residues? What were your patrollers scanning for?”

“Vital signs,” Ziyal replied, flashing a quick, startled smile at Sisko. “You don’t find that many people out in the desert, and they wouldn’t have got far in daylight, if they didn’t transport themselves out.”

“Covering all your bases, huh?” Sisko asked, smiling back.

Garak cleared his throat. “We _did_ manage before Mr Bashir so _kindly_ decided to grace us with his insights.”

Bashir rolled his eyes. “I’ve yet to see any evidence of that. Since I came to Cardassia, I’ve met only one representative of the new civilian police I would trust to investigate anything more serious than a purloined biscuit, and whatever is the rest of the planet to do?”

“May I be so fortunate as to know the name of this…individual?” Garak raised a brow-ridge. “I will not flatter myself to presume it to be me, or you would not interfere so often with my work.”

“Modesty doesn’t suit you, Ajev. Besides, I was hardly to know you would be the ajev assigned to this case when Madam Gillot engaged me.”

“Does that mean that you would have stood aside and left matters to the proper authorities if you _had_ known?”

“And miss the chance to show off? Never.” Bashir smiled at Garak. It was not quite the bright, blinding grin he used to play-act, or the other sharper, slyer smile he wore when on the trail of some new answer. It was warm, teasing, full of promise, and Garak couldn’t help but find himself smiling back.

Nearby, Sisko snorted. When Garak looked around, he was taking notes again, and looked downright amused.

Ziyal cleared her throat. “Anyway. Um, some of the h’ssti officers tried to ask a few questions, but she’s not answering them. She won’t even tell us her name.”

Bashir frowned. “How old is this child, exactly?”

Ziyal glanced down at her PADD. “Ah- Eleven or twelve, so far as I can make out.”

“Not our murderer, then,” Bashir said, with a ‘that’s settled, then’ sort of nod.

Garak gave him a sidelong look. “How very trusting of you, Mr Bashir. While I will admit some doubt as to whether a child that age would be _capable_ of hanging a fair-sized adult by the neck…”

“The logistics alone would suggest not.”

“…we cannot discount the possibility of an accomplice.”

Bashir snorted. “An accomplice, left wandering alone in the desert with a load of stolen jewellery?”

“You yourself posited this was not a murder for pure financial gain, Mr Bashir.”

Truthfully, Garak was inclined to agree. Why bother beating an unconscious woman for money when there had been such an array of jewels there for the taking? Granted, the late Madam Gillot’s personality alone might have done it, but the beating had cost valuable time, and may well have prevented the murderer from re-boarding the train, forcing them to either walk or transport themselves back from the water-tower. He would need to check the list of passengers both before and after the incident at the water-tower – even his h’ssti officers could presumably manage a simple head-count of the remaining passengers – to be sure of that theory, but it was by far the most compelling of those he had devised and discarded since receiving the call out to the desert.

“That doesn’t mean our perpetrator would want to throw their ill-gotten gains away once they had them,” Bashir retorted. “But never mind. It’s a capital mistake to theorise in advance of data. One inevitably begins to twist facts to suit theories, rather than theories to suit facts.”

Sisko rolled his eyes. “Can you have _more_ obviously got all your ideas about detective work from Sherlock Holmes, Julian?”

“I always thought of myself as more of a Peter Wimsey type,” Bashir replied, without missing a beat. “Besides, it’s worked well enough so far. May I be the one to deal with our new addition, Ajev? If she _is_ a thief, or a murderer’s accomplice, she might speak more freely around someone who doesn’t have the power to see her imprisoned over a few baubles.”

“I’m entirely capable of interrogating one twelve-year-old child, Mr Bashir!”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Bashir’s lips pressed into a thin line. “You will not lay a hand on that child, Ajev Garak.”

“What an extreme reaction that would be! I only want to talk-”

“Then there can be no objection to my joining you, can there?” Bashir said, in that same implacable tone. “Just to talk.”

The child – the possible accomplice, Garak reminded himself – was being held in the front half of the same baggage-car that was being used to store Gillot the elder’s body. She was a rail-thin, wary little thing, with the smoke-grey scales and violet eyes of the northern continent, her long hair pulled back into one long braid down her back. Eleven or twelve, Ziyal had said, and Garak concurred, though she was small for it. Her clothes were worn, faded, ill-fitting, the hems of her tunic and leggings let down far more often than they could support, and her eyes were enormous in her thin face. It was hard to imagine a more pathetic-looking child, and something uneasy twisted in the pit of Garak’s stomach, remembering a Bajoran girl no older than this half-starved little scrap, and the stunned, suspicious look in her eyes as latinum was pressed into her hands.

“Good evening, child,” Garak said, not unkindly, as that would only make her more resistant. “My name is Garak. This is Mr Julian Bashir. We have a few questions for you.”

The girl’s eyes widened, her gaze fixed on Garak, but she did not speak.

“We will start, I think,” Garak pressed on, “With your name.”

No reply. This was usually the point at which Garak would simply try to wait out his subject, but in this case…no. No, silence would not work here.

“Have you had anything to drink since you were found?” he asked instead. No reaction. “I can have one of the h’ssti fetch you some kamoy syrup while we talk…”

No response.

“Bribery isn’t going to get us anywhere, then,” Bashir said, sticking his hands in his pockets, further rumpling the lines of his white tunic. The man’s tailor ought to curse his name. “Though I think she could do with something to eat and drink anyway. You’re not in any trouble,” he added to the girl, who turned her head to look at him, eyes narrowing a little.

“In point of fact, Mr Bashir, she may yet be in a great deal of trouble,” Garak said coolly. “You are aware that you have been caught with more than a thousand _lek_ ’s worth of stolen jewels?”

The girl’s head whipped around. So. Not entirely insensible to fear, then. Garak had almost preferred the blankness. It stirred fewer memories. Yes, that would work. Garak as he was now, in the grim black of the civilian investigative service, the obvious representative of authority, made a singularly unconvincing sympathetic ear. Bashir, though…Bashir was all warmth and sincerity, and that was a charm that all Garak’s guile could not equal. And he did not even seem to realise he was doing it.

“I’m sure you had your reasons for being there,” Bashir said, pitching his voice low and confiding. “I remember you, don’t I? From the station?”

The girl’s eyes widened a little. Garak made a note to check the passenger lists for a child meeting this description. Somehow, he doubted he would find this child on any of them.

“How did you find the jewels?” Bashir asked, “You won’t be punished, so long as you tell the truth.”

Now, the girl looked distinctly sceptical. Garak couldn’t blame her.

“Or rather,” he said dryly, “You will not be punished so long as you speak. The law is, I’m afraid, a blunt instrument. I may tell my superiors that it would be physically impossible for you to have committed the murder we are now investigating, but so long as yours is the only name I have to offer them…”

It was not, nor would it be. Darel was the more likely scapegoat, if a scapegoat was the best that he could offer.

He allowed himself a small and mirthless smile. It was one of the more unnerving smiles in his repertoire, and it had the desired effect. “The situation is most unfortunate, but I don’t make the rules.”

“But you do play the game, don’t you, Ajev?” Bashir snapped back at him, glaring, before turning back to the frightened girl, his voice softening slightly. “And I would not put it past the authorities here to claim you tried to rob the old lady. That she put up a fight and was killed in the struggle. They won’t really believe you did it, but it would be…tidier…than admitting they hadn’t found the truth. We need to know where you found those jewels. It might be the only thing that keeps you out of prison.”

“Or worse,” Garak added, a little more harshly. Madam Revok’s trial was still ongoing, but no-one was in any real doubt of its outcome.

Bashir’s head snapped around. “Wor- Oh. Oh, no. You don’t- Not to _children_ , surely!”

“For murder, we do.” Garak said. “This is not the Federation, Mr Bashir. Cardassia is far from the only power in the Alpha Quadrant that executes its criminals.”

“Yes, but…” Bashir looked faintly sickened now, and Garak did not think that was feigned.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” the girl said plaintively, drawing their attention back.

Bashir swallowed. “Of course not,” he said, with an attempt at his previous briskness, but it was clear his heart wasn’t in it.

A long pause, and then.

“…’Zella,” the girl muttered. “My name. Kasella.”

“Kasella,” Bashir said, and smiled at her. It was amazing, how different that sunny grin could look like this, with real warmth behind it, wide and bright and heart-stoppingly beautiful, lighting up his whole narrow face. Garak almost wanted to look away, couldn’t quite do it. It seemed to have the same effect on their young potential accomplice as, shyly, cautiously, Kasella smiled back.

Of course, that wasn’t the end of it.

Kasella – no surname, and she’d clammed up so hard when asked for one it was clearly a sore spot – had been wandering the desert for hours, most of it in daylight, following the rail line, and the Cardassian body could only take so much. Bashir had put aside his apparent renunciation of his former profession just long enough to prescribe a lie-down, a great deal of water and a solid meal before the child was interrogated any further. Garak left her wolfing down a bowl of tefla broth under the eye of a pair of h’ssti officers, only to be cornered by Bashir again almost as soon as he’d left the baggage car.

“What will happen to her now?” Bashir asked, without preamble, looking back at the door they’d just left by.

Garak pursed his lips. “Her family will have to be found and contacted, I suppose.”

“And until they are?”

He had been hoping to avoid this.

“Traditionally, children without parents have no status in Cardassian society,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back. “The law has since been changed somewhat, but most Cardassians still regard them as...of lesser importance, compared to their own families.”

“Your parents die and, overnight, you’re nothing?” Bashir demanded

“…well, yes.”

“Unbelievable! What about extended family? Aunts, grandparents, cousins, all that sort of thing? God knows your politicians talk enough about ‘proper Cardassian family values’ and how ‘the children are the future of Cardassia’!”

“If such exist, they are expected to care for their orphaned relations,” Garak allowed, “But you must see how no parent would ever wish to offer advancement to another’s child that might instead go to their own.”

“Only if they’re the evil stepmother in a fairy-tale,” Bashir muttered. “And if there isn’t any extended family?”

Garak shrugged. “These days, there are orphanages. The State makes provision for the basic needs of orphaned children. Before that…well. Work could always be found for them. The Guard took many of them, once they reached an age where they might be useful. I believe they still do.”

It was best not to think of how close he had come to that fate. Bastard children were ranked scarcely a hair above orphans. If Tolan had not been willing to pose as his sister’s husband. If Tain had decided Mila knew too much. One slip would have been all it took.

“And no-one sees any problem with- Oh, what am I saying, of course you don’t.” Bashir scowled at the wall.

“If you object to Cardassian social practices so much, you are welcome to return to the Federation,” Garak said silkily, watching Bashir’s face.

An odd blankness fell over Bashir’s face at that. For a moment, he didn’t seem to see Garak, or the train, or anything else. “No, I’m not.” He drew in a sharp breath, and seemed to draw away a little as he did so. “I have a skimmer due to arrive in an hour or so. Do you want to interrogate my client again, or do I have leave to go?”

“I can interview Madam Gillot without _your_ being there.”

Bashir gave him a very level sort of look. “Yes or no, Ajev.”

Garak considered this. He did not believe, honestly, that there was much more to learn at this point from Ulani Gillot. At least, not without further information that would tell him which questions to ask beyond the preliminaries. On the other hand, a Bashir that was trailing after Garak was not causing havoc elsewhere, and so long as he believed he had a duty to his client, Bashir would remain.

“I’m sure you will be informed should any such need arise,” he said instead, with an enigmatic little smile. “I do hope you aren’t harbouring any particular hopes of Madam Gillot, Mr Bashir. She is, as I understand it, engaged to be married?”

Bashir made a disgusted noise. “Not this again! Why is it everyone keeps assuming I can’t do a good turn for someone without having some sort of ulterior motive? The poor woman’s mother just died! I’m hardly going to be making advances under those circumstances, am I?”

Garak, who could be relied upon to have at least seven ulterior motives at any given time, smiled a perfunctory sort of smile, and left to check on the passenger counts.

The results were hardly promising. H’ssti Rejal and H’ssti Vethak were workmanlike and reliable and usually trustworthy. Still, checking their lists against both crew and passenger manifests turned up neither a handsome young guard nor Kasella. Two stowaways, then. And one of them most probably a murderer. At least that meant most of the train’s passengers could be released pending further enquiries as and when they became relevant. Details would be taken down, addresses noted, ident numbers memorised.

Most would go on to Lakarian a day late, but none the worse for wear. Others, having had pressing business they had now missed, elected to return to Masad, and Garak was relieved to discover Darel and his son were amongst them. Their names and descriptions could have been easily circulated in the event of their flight, but Lakarian was a vast and sprawling city, the first capital of the planet of Cardassia and of the Hebitian Empire before it, in the old days before the Tarlak had been blasted and dug out of the desert and Kardasi’or grown up around it. It would be far too easy for father and son to get lost in that metropolis, to disappear into the crowds forever, now the state’s scrutiny had been so brutally pared back. A case like this would have been so much simpler under the old regime, when the trains had still had hidden cameras in every corridor and a listening device in every compartment. They would have had a name, a face, an ident number by now, might have been at the murderer’s door by nightfall.

Instead, the sole, blatant camera that had observed the first-class corridor had been disabled by the childishly simple trick of tilting it upwards, so that all day it showed nothing but the train’s grey durasteel ceiling, a view neither sublime nor enlightening.

“The guards are the only ones who ought to have access to the camera centre, though,” Ziyal said, frowning at it. “It needs a guard’s ident pin to even open the channel, let alone re-programme it.”

“Our elusive friend has already succeeded in stealing or counterfeiting a guard’s uniform,” Garak reminded her. “The pin would not be too great a stretch from there.”

He paused, and glanced out the window, already considering where the uniform must have been taken from, and whether that might prove a better angle of attack…and stopped dead at the sight that met his eyes.

Bashir’s promised skimmer had arrived. This was not, in itself, terribly surprising. Nor was the fact that the skimmer was new, shining, top-of-the-line, one of the handsome new racing models imported from off-world at ludicrous expense. _That_ was entirely to be expected, from Bashir’s tastes.

Rather less expected was the jaunty wave from a grinning Bashir as the skimmer juddered into life, rising to a hover as Garak watched, and Kasella sitting in the higher, narrower passenger seats behind him, wedged between a smirking Jake Sisko and Ulani Gillot.

“….Kalajev,” Garak said, with awful steadiness, Tain’s mocking laughter echoing in his brain. “Can it be possible that Mr Bashir has been allowed to abduct our principal witness and the younger Madam Gillot?”

“I think it has to be,” Ziyal replied, staring out at the desert as the skimmer rose into full flight, taking Bashir, Sisko and the two Cardassians with it.


	3. Chapter 3

Of course, there was no liberty to pursue their runaways, and no legal justification either. Garak had not placed either Ulani Gillot or their stowaway under arrest, and now very much wished that he had. In the old days, that would not have mattered. If Julian Bashir had not been there, it would not have mattered either. Bashir had a way of upending the proper order of things, and Garak could not say he much cared for it. He tried to imagine Bashir in an Order holding cell, tried to picture him afraid, despairing, broken, couldn’t quite manage it. If he had wanted information from Bashir in his Order days, Garak thought he might have tried seduction, to wring out information through pillow talk. It would not have been an unpleasant task, even. Bashir was not bad-looking, in a smooth foreign way, without scales or ridges to mark paths across that golden-brown skin. If he had been assigned to torture him…Garak did not wish to think of that. Exile and retirement both had dulled his edges, and it had been so long now since his last real interrogation, the last time he had used every bloody trick he knew in service to a Cardassia that no longer existed. Torture was not like riding a hound, where once one got the knack it was with you for life. You had to keep your hand in or else you were lost.

There had been a time when the first thought in his head upon meeting any new stranger had been of how long they would last under interrogation. It had been a game, to spot each detail, to make judgements based on character and physiology, to guess at what might be most effective. It was what had made him Tain’s best, once. He had thought of it every day on Terok Nor, where there had been tortures enough to glut even his appetite for blood and the thought of returning to the interrogation chamber had sustained him and fed upon him like an addict’s cravings. He could not say, exactly, when that had changed. When he had returned to a Cardassia he no longer knew, and realised that there could be no more such interludes? When he had been offered work in Masad by an old contact who had found better luck than Garak with the new regime and been too busy trying to learn the rules of a craft entirely like and unlike that he knew? As he rose drearily through a service that held so little of the wild excitement of his first calling, slipping further into middle-aged torpor every year? He did not know.

But the Order’s time had ended, and still there was work. The forensics team had to be brought in from Masad, Gillot the elder’s body delivered to the coroner for autopsy, questions asked and answered. All told, it was past daybreak before he was satisfied he could leave the train to return to Masad, past midday before Garak reached home again.

‘Home’, these days, was a poky little apartment of no more than three rooms in one of the newer, and therefore cheaper, parts of the city, well away from the historic centre with its blue-and-gold mosaics and views over the lake. It was not, in essentials, much different from his cramped quarters on Terok Nor, except that it was on Cardassia, and the nagging edge of claustrophobia that always followed Garak on space journeys was eased. There were orchids growing in pots on the windowsill, a pair of narrow bookshelves, a pile of mending waiting for him to find enough free time to finish his repairs. An ajev’s salary did not allow for many luxuries. Still, it was better than a Bajoran prison, or even a Cardassian one, considering how hard public opinion had swung against the former servants of the state.

He was bone-tired and aching when he got in, but the orchid feeders needed re-filling, and the smell of the supper his landlady had left on the table by the door was reminding him forcibly that he hadn’t eaten since he received the call out to the desert late yesterday. The orchids first. He was worried he might have over-watered them, testing the soil, or that Madam Terek had done when she’d stopped in with his supper. The roots of the largest were already brownish and uncomfortably soft to the touch with what might be the beginnings of root-rot. In the back of his head, he was still mulling over the next day. He would need to hunt down Bashir and find out where he was keeping Kasella – the girl was the nearest thing to a witness they had, and they would need that if they were to have a hope of finding Madam Gillot’s killer. Garak wondered if throwing him in the cells for obstruction of a state investigation was still possible under the circumstances, and regretfully concluded that it was not. The new regime took a very dim view of such things for some reason, even when the putative victim deserved it as richly as Bashir did for that stunt with the skimmer.

That brought his thoughts back to Bashir. It would have been easier if Garak still had the resources of the Order behind him. The Federation’s secure servers, where the classified information of current and former Starfleet officers was kept, were beyond a middle-aged ajev from Masad as they had not been beyond Agent Regnar in his prime. Garak was left with what was readily available. Lieutenant Doctor Julian Bashir, stationed on the former Terok Nor. He had arrived on the station just a fortnight before Garak had left it, although Garak could not recall that they had ever met during that brief overlap. Chief Medical Officer of an entire station at twenty-seven – nearly twenty-eight. That put Bashir’s age now at a new-minted thirty-two. Garak would have estimated him older. It had not been incompetence that lost Bashir his commission, at least, from the sheer array of articles, presentations, nominations and commendations. Twice commended for conspicuous gallantry by Starfleet, runner-up for the Carrington Award, sector championship team captain for the Starfleet Academy racquetball team. His academic career fit well with that record, always in the top ten percent of his classes, never top of the class. It wasn’t precisely useful. Garak had underestimated Bashir’s intelligence once, and he wasn’t going to make that mistake again. Further confirmation of that intelligence was hardly necessary. More for something to occupy his mind than anything, Garak brought up a list of papers on his PADD from the file he’d already gathered, and paused.

The range of topics was wide and eclectic, yes, but for the last year, one theme kept popping up, again and again. Dominion bioweapons. Three separate papers on the nature of Ketracel-white addiction, one on an unrelated Dominion-created pathogen, and one, from a conference where Bashir had been, at thirty-one, the keynote speaker, on the White itself, and on the biochemistry of both replicating and nullifying it. That last had been presented just a week after the Jem’Hadar revolt that had plunged the entire Gamma Quadrant into civil war. Garak had never been in the habit of monitoring medical advances where they were not relevant to his work, but…but the cure to Ketracel-white addiction had been a closely-held Federation secret right up until the Jem’Hadar had revolted. And here was the entire procedure, laid out in black and white and dated from far, far too soon after the revolt not to have been written before it. Had Bashir been part of the team of Federation experts that had been responsible for that breakthrough? He was ideally placed for it, just at the wormhole. He would likely have ventured into the Gamma Quadrant on away missions, was likelier to have encountered Jem’Hadar himself than any other medical officer in the Federation. Exactly how great a role in that discovery had Bashir played? Was that why Bashir’s stipend had been so generous? The Federation did not usually provide so lavishly for the disgraced ex-officers of its fleet.

None of this, of course, brought Garak any closer to what the crime had been that saw Bashir discharged and brought him to Cardassia in the first place. A _dishonourable_ discharge, at that. That had not sounded exceptional when Garak had first heard it. Now, reading what information was available about the concept as it was implemented in Starfleet, the matter revealed itself rather more serious. A Federation discharge could be ‘general’ for minor misdemeanours, ‘other than honourable’ for greater ones, or a ‘bad conduct’ discharge for active criminality. But a dishonourable discharge was handed down for only the most despicable of military conduct. Deserters, mutineers, murderers. To be discharged in such a way brought with it the forfeiture of all voting rights for five years, a permanent mark on the offender’s records that often interfered with finding other work, and usually a lengthy prison term. Also, more pertinently, the loss of all veterans’ benefits regardless of previous honourable service.

Garak frowned. Bashir did not, it must be said, live like a man stinting himself. And he had not had the impression that Jake Sisko – a gainfully employed civilian of good name – enjoyed nearly so generous an allowance as Bashir did. Peculation? Payoff? Simply an extravagant lifestyle and mounting debts? Money undid everyone, sooner or later. It had been the money trail that had led them to Procal Dukat, in the end. He would be interested to see what Bashir’s financial records told. Tomorrow.

As for the crime…perhaps it was foolish, and mercy knew Garak could be deceived…but Bashir did not strike him as a murderer. Nor as a deserter, for that matter – whatever else could be said for Bashir, he did not lack physical courage, as the business of Gul Revok had made all too clear. A man who rushed to take over others’ duties when he had none of his own was not a man to turn his back on an obligation rightfully his. Mutiny? That was, of all the options, probably the most plausible. Not a traitor, perhaps, and he did not seem power-seeking, but Bashir’s absolute, maddening conviction that the rules did not apply to him must have got him into trouble before. But if he was a mutineer, why was he still free? Even if the mutiny itself was too heavily classified to be widely known, the mutineer would have to be imprisoned or all hope of fleet discipline would be at an end. Garak pursed his lips. He needed more information. Better information. Was this worth spending one of those precious few favours that remained to him? To sate a casual curiosity, with no gain to Cardassia behind it? But then- The most despicable military conduct. He could devise a hundred stories about what Bashir’s crime might have been, but to judge the man’s character, he needed specifics, and for those, nothing would do but the facts. For Cardassia’s sake, to know what manner of man the Federation had deposited upon her sands, and to know how far he might be trusted, if he was going to keep insinuating himself into Garak’s cases going forward.

It had been a very long time since Garak had used the old triple-encrypted channel that was his only link to old friends, but Pythas picked up at once.

“Is there more trouble in Masad than I was given to understand?”

“No more than usual.” Garak smiled to himself. “And in the capital?”

“Alon Ghemor is capable, whatever his allegiances. Cardassia is in no more danger now than it was when last we spoke.”

Garak paused, wet his lips with his tongue, and then. “I need information. You still have some contacts within the Federation, do you not?”

“Information? About what?”

“About _who_ , Cova. One Lieutenant Doctor Julian Bashir, dishonourably discharged from the Federation Starfleet perhaps three months ago.”

“You have reason to believe this man is a threat to Cardassia?”

“No,” Garak had to admit. “But he has been asking inconvenient questions. I would like to know more about Mr Bashir. And precisely why the Federation chose to discard him so entirely.”

A pause, and then. “…I recognise the name. He applied for residency on Cardassia two and a half months ago. Just the residency, no work permit.”

“He is quite conspicuously without visible means of support,” Garak agreed, as blandly as he could manage. “That part of the investigation is well in hand.”

“I see. I’ll do what I can. But I can’t promise anything.”

The line went dead.

Garak let his smile widen a little. An ‘I can’t promise anything’ from Pythas was more reliable than an ‘I’ll have it on your desk by nightfall’ from anyone else. And, unlike Garak, Pythas could still go unnoticed. Even with the dismantling of the state observation system, leaving half the population reeling and terrified from the loss of that protective, watchful eye, Garak knew himself observed. Not so very closely – he had swept the apartment for listening devices every week since he moved in, and never found a thing – but Ghemor would be a fool to let Tain’s protégé live entirely unobserved, even this far from the centres of power. Pythas Lok had been declared dead five years ago, murdered by his own underlings during the fall of the Obsidian Order. He had a new name now, a new face, though Garak had never seen it and would not look for it, the better to avoid the attention of the authorities.

As for Garak…well. He’d had nothing to hide since his exile, not really. He hid things anyway, of course, and if it pleased Alon Ghemor to pry into the petty secrets Garak kept now, in this new life of quiet service to a state he no longer recognised, Garak wished him all joy of it, and of the various security measures he had taken in the event of any such prying. That the best-defended hiding place of all held nothing more sensitive than Garak’s small stash of off-world imported chocolates was a source of constant amusement, and it was one of the greatest regrets of Garak’s new life that no-one had yet attempted to break into it. He debated the merits of a piece before bed, and decided against it. Once the case was over, if they found the culprit, he promised himself. Delavian chocolate was expensive, and he didn’t have that much of it left.

*

The headquarters of the Masad branch of the new civilian investigative service, whose formal name had undergone no fewer than fifteen changes since Garak had joined its ranks, was a great, imposing building near the heart of the Old Town of Masad. It had, in fact, once served the same function for Masad’s own branch of the Obsidian Order, as every political cartoonist in the city had seen fit to comment on at one time or another. Even the cells were still there, though thoroughly scrubbed out and now used for record-keeping. A new, modern cellblock had been built on the ground floor, intended to hold prisoners for no more than the fifty hours that the investigative service was permitted to hold anyone without charging them. The Order’s mark above the doors had been plastered over, but the blank spot where it had once looked down over the Legates’ Square – the Oralian Square, as it was now – still drew the eye irresistibly towards itself.

Kalajev Tora was hovering in the doorway beneath it when Garak arrived at the station, bright-eyed and looking quite pleased with herself.

“I’ve had the station publish a description of our stowaway,” she said as soon as Garak reached her. “And made it clear that she’s under temporary care for the duration of this investigation, in case she _is_ involved, and the murderer wants to remove any loose ends.”

Garak raised a brow-ridge. “That does rather undermine our case for kidnap, Kalajev.” 

Ziyal gave him a faintly bemused look. “…can we call it a kidnap? It happened under the eye and with the full knowledge of a senior Ajev.”

Garak considered the explanation he would have to make to bring a charge of kidnap – he could have sent out an alert in the minutes after Bashir had taken off, after all, and hadn’t – and winced at the thought of what a fool he would appear if he tried it.

“Very well, Kalajev. Has there been any response, as yet?”

“No, sir. I made sure all responses would be sent to you.”

Well, that was one problem less.

“Then I think it’s time we paid Mr Bashir a visit, don’t you?”

Julian Bashir lived not so very far from the station, on a quiet, tree-shaded street in Masad’s historic Old Town. Garak couldn’t help a sharp stab at envy as the service ground-car drew up outside a tall, thin house, plastered in the familiar glorious blue of Masad, its scarlet shutters thrown open to receive the cool night air.

Ziyal frowned. “You’re sure this is the right address?”

“It _is_ the address on file, Kalajev.” Garak looked up at the house, his lips pursed. It was the sort of house that belonged in an adaptation of one of the great romantic classics of the First Republic era, with its gracious swooping lines and fine geometric windows on the higher levels. An absurd expense, and far too large for a single man, even with Sisko living there with him. “Your thoughts?”

“He- He isn’t involved with anything, sir? I mean…anything that would bring in that sort of money? Investments, maybe?”

“Not so far as I know.” He smiled at her. It was not at all a nice expression. “But you may be onto something. See if you can get more information from Mr Sisko, he may be more receptive than Bashir.”

There was another ground-car parked nearby, of good quality, but a few years old. Not Bashir’s, then. Visitors. Madam Gillot? Or someone else? They would just have to see for themselves.

The gate was the low, ornamental kind, leading to a narrow path bordered with greenery. Well-maintained greenery, at that, with the usual assortment of fragrant night-blooming flowers that had contributed so greatly to the Old Town’s romantic reputation. Garak could smell k’selses on the night air, and beneath that the subtle, spicy scent of amaranth leaves from the bushes that bordered the gate. How on Cardassia was Bashir _paying_ for all this? Investments, maybe, but he would have needed starting capital for that, and it was not a route that would have seen these sorts of returns in the space of just a few months. Criminal dealings? Maybe related to the offence that had seen him discharged so ignominiously from Starfleet? Until Pythas got back to him, Garak could only speculate.

The door was opened by a middle-aged Cardassian woman in a grey dress, her long hair braided up demurely off her face.

“Ah. Ajev Garak, I presume?”

Garak donned his most harmless-looking smile, his eyes flicking over her from head to toe, assessing. “I am. Is Mr Bashir at home to visitors?”

“I was not aware the State needed to ask.” The woman stepped aside, ushered them in. “My name is Reka. If you would be willing to wait in the study, I will tell Mr Bashir you have arrived. He said to expect you sometime this evening.”

Being left to kick their heels out of the way was hardly conducive to the authority of a servant of the state…but to be left alone in Bashir’s study could only be to their advantage. Garak let the harmless smile widen.

“Then by all means lead on, Reka.”

Reka gave a respectful little half-bow and led them down the long, thin hallway and up the stairs into the main part of the house. The way she moved confirmed Garak’s suspicions. It reminded him quite forcibly of his mother in her young day, and of the façade he had adopted oftentimes himself. There was training there, covered over with a thin veneer of compliant, efficient servility. Not Obsidian Order, he didn’t think, though he had hardly known Tain’s every agent, but something about the way this woman moved spoke of a more than passing familiarity with violence, if the need arose.

The house was far less informative. Beautiful, yes, but…impersonal. Garak had the uncomfortable sense of being on a stage set, or in a holosuite. As if this whole beautiful house had been designed by a set-designer to convey that this was the home of a mysterious and dangerous off-world eccentric, rather than having come together simply from the tastes of its occupant. He had yet to see one thing, one painting, one knick-knack on a shelf, that spoke of Bashir’s personality in any way Garak could recognise. It was not at all a comfortable experience. Received wisdom on Cardassia called a man’s home his second face. Bashir had apparently chosen to mask his.

The study Reka showed them into was a little less impersonal, in that the books – physical books, no less, bound in fine red leather – on the shelves appeared to have been read. Garak glanced in passing at the titles as Reka bowed herself perfunctorily out of the room. The medical texts were predictable, if dry, the fiction largely unknown to him. Garak prided himself on a wide knowledge of the great works of galactic literature, but still could make very little of ‘ _Goldfinger_ ’ or ‘ _Rumi: The Complete Works_ ’, or ‘ _Two Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ ’.

He caught the Kalajev’s eye.

“Watch the corridor for me, Ziyal,” he said quietly, and booted up the sleek new computer console in the corner. The data clip in his pocket was Order-issue, one of the few souvenirs Garak still had from his time as Tain’s right hand. Small enough to conceal in a pocket, but capacious enough to copy a computer’s entire hard drive and it would do so automatically once plugged in.

Ziyal looked faintly disapproving. “Are you sure we should be doing this? We don’t have any evidence Mr Bashir has committed a crime.”

“This is not an official investigation, Kalajev,” Garak reminded her. “But, as you yourself have pointed out, the Federation does not provide so generously for its expatriates as Mr Bashir’s lifestyle would suggest. It may be that he is entirely innocent. But I would prefer to know for sure before he inveigles himself into any further investigations.”

It was near enough the truth. That is, it was _a_ reason to investigate, even if it was not Garak’s reason.

“That sounds rather paranoid. Sir,” Ziyal added, with a faint smile, when Garak looked at her sharply.

“Professional necessity,” Garak replied, plugging in the data clip and glancing at the screen. “Oh. Now that is odd.”

Ziyal looked round. “What is?”

“I thought you disapproved of unofficial investigations.”

It might, of course, be a smokescreen, in which case Bashir was certainly involved in sharper practice than he claimed, but if it wasn’t…then Bashir did not have any money. There was no credit account under his name, no details for one, not even an anonymous string of numbers from some off-world banking conglomerate. No debts, and no funds squared away. What there was, was expenditure. But even that was wrong. Money was spent, goods were acquired, but Bashir, if these records were to be believed, neither had access to the money nor owned the goods once bought. Rather, he held them in trust from the generosity of this unknown backer, in much the same way as a grown but dependent son...or, Garak was forcibly reminded, a rich man’s mistress. He had known Bajoran comfort women, during the war on Bajor, though he had never indulged in the practice himself. Many of them had put on airs as well, though none had alternately maddened and fascinated him in the same way Bashir did. But if that were so, then why would this unknown patron allow Bashir to keep Sisko in the house? The relationship between the two was, to all appearances, entirely platonic, but the sort of men who insisted their catamites and concubines lived entirely upon their mercy rarely cared for such distinctions. Gul Dukat had kept his mistresses confined to their quarters on Terok Nor, unless it pleased his fancy to show them off on his arm, and they were rarely allowed to mingle even with other comfort women. And Dukat had been far from the most tyrannical of patrons – the man had always made much of his kindness and liberality towards the Bajoran people, had done so even at his trial on Bajor. The Bajorans had not shared the sentiment. Was there a patron, and did he simply not yet know? Or…another possibility suggested itself. Bashir was outstanding in his field, had been one of those responsible for the military-medical breakthrough that had defanged the Dominion, at least for the time being. There were uses for a man like that. And, having proven himself disloyal to one state already, it would be wise for a second state wishing to use Bashir’s talent to ensure his loyalty by whatever means they could. So, they would supply his needs, as lavishly as he pleased, but keep him dependent upon them. It had been done before, although if that were the case Bashir was still being permitted an unheard-of degree of freedom of movement. And why, if Bashir was being maintained in such an extravagant style in anticipation of further medical breakthroughs, was he wasting his time dashing about Masad after murderers?

“Garak!” Ziyal hissed from the door. “Footsteps on the stairs! Two people. I think one of them is Madam Gillot.”

Garak muttered something obscene in Romulan and powered down the computer screen, crossing the room on soundless feet to press his ear to the crack of the door beside Ziyal.

“-and for everything you’ve done for me,” a voice was saying on the other side.

“Oh- No. That is- I was glad to do it. You’re sure you don’t want to stay longer? At least let Doctor Parmak take another look at you before you go.”

Garak’s ears pricked up. Doctor Parmak. Now _there_ was a familiar name. Still alive, then? Most who earned Tain’s _personal_ displeasure did not long survive the experience.

“I’m quite able to take care of her,” said a new voice – a man, though not one Garak recognised. Hm. The fiancé or the cousin? Madam Gillot did not have so very many connexions as all that, and those were the only two in easy range now Gillot the elder had passed. Probably the fiancé, from the curl of possessive jealousy in his voice.

“You’ll be busy, with the case demanding so…so much of your attention,” Madam Gillot said, in the tones of a woman used to peacekeeping. “Especially if the Ajev is here.”

“Yes. Where did you put them, Reka?”

“In the study, sir.”

“Just Julian, please. Which reminds me-”

Garak knew the signs well enough to spring back and pretend to be examining the contents of Bashir’s bookshelves before the door opened. Ziyal was not quite so practiced.

“Ajev Garak,” Bashir said brightly, smiling through the door at them. It was the wide, sunny one he wore when he wanted to appear harmless, and Garak was suspicious of it on principle. “Kalajev. You’ll be here about Kasella, I expect?”

Garak smiled back, just as wide but rather less friendly, trying not to wince at Bashir’s tunic, which was even more garish than the last one had been. Whoever had told Bashir that purple and orange was a good colour combination on him ought to be _shot_.

“You will be pleased to know,” Garak said, not deigning to acknowledge the question. “That there will be no charges of kidnap brought against you.”

“What an extreme reaction that would be!” Bashir parroted back at him, smile widening. “ _You_ might be glad to hear that ‘Zella has agreed to cooperate with the investigation.”

“I am amazed that you still believe she has a choice in the matter, Mr Bashir. But no matter.”

Looking past Bashir, there was Madam Gillot, looking faintly worried at the sight of him and flanked by one blandly handsome light-scaled young man, while another hung back behind her with his hands in his tunic pockets. Ah. These would be Kadit Hubon, the cousin, and Tujes Docona, the fiancé. Although it might have been difficult to tell which was which if not for the way Docona hovered over his betrothed. Jake Sisko brought up the rear, watching the group with narrowed eyes and an air of profound suspicion, though his face broke into a grin at the sight of Ziyal, who smiled awkwardly back. It was really rather sickeningly sweet.

Madam Gillot cleared her throat. “…we should go,” she said, still a little nervously, avoiding Garak’s eyes.

“I’ll comm you when I have more information about the case,” Bashir promised recklessly.

Madam Gillot forced a smile. “I’ll look forward to your call,” she said earnestly, slipping her arm into her fiancé’s, their hands locking in the accepted form for a betrothed couple before they hurried away down the stairs. Hubon lingered longer, and laid a hand deliberately on Bashir’s shoulder, pressing something into the other hand. As he moved, Garak caught sight of a band of darker scales across the palm of the hand that brushed Bashir’s, the tell-tale sign of the recent use of a dermal regenerator.

“As will I,” he said, meeting Bashir’s eyes and being met only with that same smile, which promised warmth and light but gave nothing of itself away, before he too descended the stairs.

Garak raised a brow-ridge. “Another of your conquests, Mr Bashir?”

“Oh, hardly,” Bashir said dismissively, “I never did go for the young-and-callow type.”

Jake Sisko let out a strangled sort of cough at that, which grew into a coughing fit when Bashir looked around at him.

“Should I bring tea, sir?” Reka asked.

“Julian, please,” Bashir said, with the air of someone who would keep saying it until he was listened to. In this case, Garak rather thought he’d be saying it forever, if the look on Reka’s face was anything to go by. “And yes, thank you. Red leaf, Tarkalean or jumja, Ajev, Kalajev?”

“I suppose there’s no hope of rokassa?”

Bashir frowned. “I…don’t think we have any. Do we?” This last aimed at Reka.

She coughed. “I have a…small supply, sir. For personal use.”

“Then, no,” Bashir said, turning a faintly apologetic smile on Garak. “I can’t ask Reka to give up her own private stock, but there’s plenty of red-leaf if that’s all right. Why don’t you come through here and sit down? We might as well be comfortable.”

“Thank you. Red leaf…would be acceptable.”

“Jumja,” Ziyal muttered, flushing a little.

“Same here, please,” Sisko said, just a hair too quickly. “I, uh, got a taste for it on DS9.”

Bashir gave him an oddly knowing look at that, which Sisko returned with interest.

The sitting-room they were shown into had the same stage-dressing quality as the rest of the house, made all the more jarring by the presence of its occupant. Bashir, dark-eyed and carelessly lovely in his beautifully-made garish tunic, did not look quite natural against pale plaster and extravagantly overstuffed furniture. It was foolish, Garak reminded himself, to try and imagine where he might fit better.

“Pleasant as this interlude may have been, Mr Bashir, we are not here to speak to you.”

“No,” Bashir said, “You’re here for ‘Zella.” A pause, and then. “I’ve been able to talk her around. She’ll answer your questions, and I think she’ll even do it truthfully.” An odd look passed over his face. Garak might even have called it loathing. “Have you been able to find out anything about her caretakers?”

“Not yet,” Ziyal spoke up. “We’ve put out a notice with her description, and we can take a holo of her before we leave, to add to it.”

“We’re not sending her back there, are we?” Sisko demanded, looking outright horrified. “Julian, you can’t seriously be talking about-”

“I’m not sure we have many other options, legally speaking,” Bashir said, and now he seemed genuinely pained. “That said – what are Cardassia’s child cruelty laws like, Ajev? Where does the state stand on abuse?”

There was something very ugly in his voice now, old and knotted too tightly for Garak to untangle. Something in all this, then, was personal.

“It was, under the old regime, considered the concern of the family,” Garak replied, as lightly as he could. Against his will, he found his mind straying back to a dark, cramped cupboard, and the choking fear that this time, this time, Tain might decide to leave him in there forever. “So far as I know,” he went on, “There has been no change in the law.”

Sisko’s mouth fell open. Bashir’s expression, though, had flattened out. It would have looked entirely neutral, if not for the white-knuckled grip of his hands around his cup, the faint greyish cast to his face.

“I see,” he said, in a terrible flat voice. “Will you be removing her from my custody, _Ajev_?”

Garak took a judicious sip of tea. “I think not, for the time being. That is, if you are willing to house young Kasella for the duration of this investigation.”

Bashir nodded. “I’ll bring her down, then. Jake, why don’t you tell the Kalajev about that…information…you uncovered about our last set of guests? I’m sure she’ll be interested to hear it.”

Sisko looked around, startled. “I- _Julian_ ,” he hissed, sounding mortified.

“You _were_ the one that found it,” Bashir reminded him. “You deserve the credit. And the Ajev will probably be busy.”

“Extremely,” Garak agreed, catching Bashir’s eye. For a moment, it felt almost like camaraderie. Besides, Ziyal might well have more luck in drawing Sisko out than Garak could expect.

Bashir set down his cup and rose, and Garak’s eyes were drawn irresistibly to the new long crack in the side of the cup, which he could’ve sworn hadn’t been there when the tea was brought in.

Jake Sisko cleared his throat and looked over at Garak. “Uh…so, information. I wanted to do a bit of digging, after we figured out the murderer probably wasn’t officially on the train. And, statistically, most murders are committed by someone the victim knows, so I looked up the Gillots’ next-of-kin.”

“I tried the same thing!” Ziyal said, looking pleased that someone else had thought to take such a basic step in the investigation. “Madam Gillot has a brother in Lakat, and then there’s the nephew, and – did you know about the fiancé before he turned up here?”

“Madam Gillot – the live Madam Gillot, Ulani – mentioned him.” Sisko grimaced a little at that. “Jealous type. Just about pitched a fit at her staying here overnight with two men. Never mind that I’m too young for her, Julian’s too old for her and if she needed chaperoning there’s Reka. Uh, Madam Davek? I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to call her. Servants…aren’t really a thing in the Federation.”

“First names are customary, when dealing with the service class,” Garak supplied, watching the two of them sidelong.

“…right. Anyway, I headed over to the university after we got back to ask a few questions, and it turns out Hubon – you saw him, right? The, uh, _charmer_ of the pair.” A faintly embarrassed look flicked across Sisko’s face, and Garak wondered just how brazen the man’s flirtations with Bashir had been. “Well, he’s in seriously deep shi- trouble. Gambling, from what I heard, and he’s lost his whole allowance a few times over and owes a lot of money. Just to make matters shadier, Mr Green-Eyed Monster Docona kept talking about how he was one exam away from being a doctor, but I ended up buying a few drinks for one of the university clerks, and it turns out he’s already failed his degree. And knows it. He’s got to clear out of halls before the end of the month. I think he’s there on some sort of scholarship? But I don't know much about how the college system works here, so I might've read that wrong.”

“I will be sure to consult neither of them if I am in need of medical advice,” Garak said dryly, but it had caught his attention. It seemed he needed a word with these two young men. The fiancé first, he thought. Docona had less to lose, and a daughter’s lover had less duty to Gillot the elder than a nephew.

Ziyal was chewing on her lip. “Financial difficulties, though. But- But then why didn’t they take the jewels?”

“For that,” Garak said, “We will have to wait on Mr Bashir, and our stowaway.”

Sisko glanced at Ziyal. “If I were writing this as a story, I’d look for a grudge,” he said. “We’ve got Darel already – and his alibi didn’t sound great – but he’s a bit too obvious for that to really work, narratively speaking.”

“Is that Mr Bashir’s theory?” Ziyal asked, rather sceptically.

“I don’t know. Julian never tells me what his theories are ahead of time. I think he likes the drama of it all.” Sisko grimaced. “I think that man’s fondest ambition is to do one of those pompous little ‘you’re probably wondering why I’ve gathered you here’ summations of a case.”

Ziyal laughed. “That sounds familiar,” she said, and then glanced nervously around at Garak, who chose that moment to be apparently fascinated by _The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club_.

“It’s like felicium for detectives,” Sisko agreed. “Do you have a pet theory about who’s guilty in all this, then?”

“…probably the cousin,” Ziyal said, after a thoughtful pause. “I never trust charming men.”

“Should I be worried?” Sisko asked, leaning forward a little with a faint grin.

Ziyal blinked, looked him up and down. “No. I mean- I don’t think you’re untrustworthy…exactly.”

“And this after you’ve already tried to arrest me once!” Sisko grinned. “Please don’t tell me I have _that_ little charm!”

Ziyal raised her brow-ridges. “I thought I already had,” she said, stumbling over it a little. It was an obvious enough flirtation, in a form that had been used in Cardassian literature from the very founding of the Union, but Sisko seemed to wilt a little in the face of it.

“Oh. Uh. Right.” He coughed, and looked back down at his notes. “So…you’ll want to talk to him?”

“Perhaps,” Garak cut in, moving back to sit down beside Ziyal, who was looking faintly annoyed now. Garak couldn’t blame her. Surely, Sisko had been on Cardassia long enough to understand when she was being so blatant? “Once we have learnt all we can from our stowaway.”

“She _does_ have a name, you realise,” Bashir said from the door. When Garak looked up, he was standing half a step behind Kasella like a mother hound standing guard over her pup.

The girl looked better now. Well, cleaner, anyway, and dressed in clothes that were actually big enough for her. She did not appear nervous, at any rate, which was admirable, if foolish. There was a defiant sort of tilt to her chin, a general air of pugnacious determination that said that she was going to say her piece and be damned to him if he didn’t believe it.

“I found the jewels by the rail line,” she said flatly, her eyes flicking to Bashir.

“I see.” Garak raised a brow-ridge. “One might wonder why you didn’t say so when we first found you.”

The girl shifted slightly. “I…didn’t think you’d believe me.”

“Why should _ever_ I do that?” Garak said silkily.

“ _Ajev_ ,” Bashir interrupted. “Go on, ‘Zella. Why were you on the train in the first place.”

Kasella shifted. “I…I wanted to get to Kardasi’or.”

Garak raised his brow-ridges and widened his eyes. “A difficult feat to achieve on the train to Lakarian.”

“I didn’t know where it was going. I just needed-” Kasella cut herself off, looking, all of a sudden, absolutely terrified.

Bashir’s eyes had narrowed, and he looked like he wanted to press further but, if he did, he could do so in his own time.

“And for the rest of the journey?” Garak asked. “Why did you disembark when you did? The middle of the desert seems an odd choice of location.”

“I was asleep,” Kasella said, and now her voice sounded shakier. “In the manual brake van. Nobody ever goes in there unless they’ve got bigger things to worry about than stowaways. I was asleep in there most of the journey, ‘till the train stopped and woke me up. I thought maybe we’d got there, but someone came in before I could get out. I thought it was the guard at first.”

“At first?” Garak said, trading a look with Ziyal, who was busily taking notes and avoiding Sisko’s eyes. “When did you learn otherwise?”

“I….don’t know it wasn’t.” Kasella looked down at her boots, before looking up at him, suddenly confident again. “But- But I heard there was a woman strung up on that train, and I can’t think why else someone would want that much cable.”

“Did you see this person clearly?”

“No. It was too bright. But- But after he’d gone, I heard noises, so I went to see what was going on and- and fell.”

“And then?”

Kasella blinked. “Well- It was horribly bright, and I couldn’t see for a while while my eyes adjusted- But then I saw the jewels, piled up on the ground by the rail line. I- I suppose someone must’ve owned them, but I- I just picked them up and ran.”

There was a long, still pause.

“I see,” Garak said at last. “Hardly conclusive evidence.”

Bashir bristled. “That’s hardly ‘Zella’s fault, now, is it?”

“No, I suppose not.” Garak sighed heavily. “I had hoped for a description, at least, but I see now _that_ belief was optimistic to the point of foolishness.”

“I rather thought you already had one,” Bashir said, frowning. “Jake can’t have been the only person to see a suspiciously young train guard who wasn’t on the official roster.”

“People do not generally notice train guards,” Garak said, remembering hours of tiresome questions that had made that point appallingly clear to him. “They see the uniform and talk to that, but ask for a description of the guard themselves, and the general public will become _remarkably_ unhelpful.”

Sisko coughed. “I mean…he’s not wrong,” he admitted. “We don’t all have your memory for faces, you know.”

“What,” Bashir muttered, “Is the point of all those memory exercises if you can’t remember one damn face!”

“It’s finding the _right_ face that’s the issue,” Garak reminded him. “Most don’t commit the faces of every passing stranger to memory. I’m surprised to learn you do.”

“I’d be more surprised to learn you didn’t,” Bashir said, with a sly smile. “It seems like a useful habit to develop, in your line of work.”

Garak smiled thinly. “Off-worlders often expect it of us. But, really, Mr Bashir, it tends to leave the mind somewhat…cluttered. Best to memorise only those things that serve a worthwhile purpose, and it is hard to judge whom it will be most useful to identify later until it is too late.”

Bashir hummed thoughtfully at that. “Yes, I can see how that would-”

“I could give you a description!” Kasella burst out indignantly. “I said I didn’t see him well, not that I didn’t see him at all! He was tall – tallish, anyway. And his scales were light – not as light as his,” she added, gesturing at Garak, “But light. He was…he looked good, I mean. Handsome.”

“That’s a start, at least,” Bashir said, smiling brightly at her. It was a very hard look to resist, that, and Kasella couldn’t quite seem to help smiling shyly back. “Can you- Was there anything distinctive about him?”

There wasn’t, as it turned out. Handsome, but in such a way as to make him fairly generic-looking, light-scaled, tall, but not excessively so. It could have been anyone, but it did not escape Garak’s notice that two men of that same description, both in financial difficulties that might be relieved by the theft of Madam Gillot’s jewels. It would not explain the brutality of the attack, except perhaps as a display of frustration from the murderer at finding themselves robbed of their prize at the last.

“Brilliant!” Bashir said extravagantly, resting a hand lightly on Kasella’s arm before hastily pulling away. “Ajev, I don’t suppose you’d be willing to let me sit in on Messrs Hubon and Docona’s interrogations?”

Garak raised his brow-ridges. “And why should I do that? You will inevitably find and interrogate them yourself in any case.”

“You sound very sure of that.” It was almost comical, how peeved Bashir looked at _that_ implication.

“My _dear_ Mr Bashir,” Garak said, barely noticing the endearment until it had slipped out. “We had not known each other a day before you had stolen state evidence, entangled yourself with the dismantling of an Idris dust ring and seduced the culprit’s presumed lover in order to test her reactions. I have every confidence that you will find some way to interfere.”


	4. Chapter 4

It was not hard to find Docona, the failed medical student who evidently had not yet told his fiancée of his suddenly-diminished prospects. He was still living in the hall of residence he had been ordered to vacate by the end of the month, and from what information Garak had been able to find in the official records, his spending had not decreased at all. Another thing to ask about, once the h’ssti officers sent to the university had fetched him.

In the meantime, Garak set his notes aside, and looked over the coroner’s report. He was irritated to discover that Bashir had been right. The late Madam Gillot had asphyxiated. It was a slow death, Garak recalled. Twenty minutes, perhaps, at the old lady’s weight. More, if she had been lighter. What was interesting, though, was the rest of the report. Neurocine overdose. She’d been already dying when they strung her up, and the beating had begun before she died, but ended well after. Sloppy. Excessive. Embarrassing. Any one of those methods would have been effective enough without employing all three. Had the killer simply not known she was dying after the neurocine was administered? Garak had seen people die that way before, but only ever in a room flooded with it. A shot of aerosol to the face would not have nearly so dramatic an effect.

There was a knock at his office door, and Ziyal poked her head around.

“Ajev Garak? We have Docona.”

Garak smiled. It was an expression that had been known to make grown men break and beg and swear they would tell him anything if only he stopped. “ _Excellent_.”

The interrogation rooms were not what they had once been, but they were the same interrogation rooms. Someone had taken away the rack of tools that Garak could still list and name off the top of his head, and put in a table and two chairs, but there was no scrubbing all that blood away. Not that somebody hadn’t tried, but the dark stain on the concrete floor did, in Garak’s opinion, add a certain something to an interrogation even now. Docona was eyeing it warily when Garak entered.

“Mr Docona,” Garak said silkily. “I trust the Kalajev did not put you to too much trouble.”

It was always, in Garak’s experience, a good idea to raise the question of how much more trouble a subject might be put to, if Garak set his mind to it. He’d pitched his voice low, adopted his best impression of Tain’s political-class accent – as late an acquisition as Garak’s own, so far as he knew, though from a far narrower gap – and smiled again, wider, showing the barest flash of teeth.

Docona stared miserably down at his shaking hands, and did not meet Garak’s eyes.

“I- What do you want to know?”

“We can start with where you were on the night of Madam Gillot’s _tragic_ demise.”

“I- I was at home,” Docona said.

Garak sighed. “You were not. Kalajev Tora took the liberty of checking with your neighbours. You did not return until the following morning, when you appeared rather the worse for wear.” He let his smile drop entirely, watching Docona with terribly cold eyes. “It would be pleasanter for you,” he said, very softly, “If you told me what I need to know before any further…persuasion…is required.”

No further persuasion was permitted, and they both knew it, but all the same Docona glanced back at the bloodstain on the floor before looking back at Garak.

“If- If I tell you…does it need to leave this room?”

“It will go all the way to the Archon’s ears, if you cannot satisfy me.”

Docona looked, for a moment, terrified…and then crumpled. “I- Please, understand, I _love_ Ulani. I would do anything for her- for our life together.” He turned great, tearful dark eyes on Garak.

“I believe you,” Garak said steadily. “Tell me what you have done.”

 _That_ trick had been Mila’s first. He’d known that one intimately from his boyhood. ‘What have you done?’ she would ask, and Garak would tell her the thing she was asking for, and half a dozen more she hadn’t known about.

“I-” Docona swallowed. “I- I was arrested. By the municipal peacekeepers. I spent most of that night in the cells before being released in the morning.”

It was an easy enough lie to verify.

“On what grounds?”

Docona’s hands twisted together in his lap. “…Solicitation,” he admitted. “I- I _do_ love her! But- There are need that she cannot- That I could not-” he broke off, shamefaced. “The…you can ask, if you need to. They should have records, of my arrest, and the- the man I was with.” He closed his eyes. “Please, don’t tell Ulani. She’d never forgive me. She- She wouldn’t understand.”

Ulani Gillot would, so far as Garak was concerned, be entirely justified on both counts, but that was no concern of his. But then, he remembered all too well what it was to be that young. In a way, it had been a blessing that the Order had allowed for no hopes of marriage. Same-sex entanglement was all well and good, but only after a first, fertile marriage had reached its natural conclusion was it entirely respectable.

“She will hear nothing from me. Now. I am informed that you borrowed money extensively from Mr Hubon this past week, and that he declined to ask for collateral?”

“He- Yes. He’s…been a good friend.” Docona coughed. “I- His set don’t always understand about- about not having money.”

Yes, Garak thought. That fit. Docona was, according to the file Garak had been perusing before the coroner’s report came in, another upjumped service-class boy like Garak himself, who had worked himself to the bone to get into the university at all and whose family had scrimped and saved to see him be able to enter, even with the scholarship. Small wonder he was so reluctant to admit he had failed.

“You appear to be remarkably close to Mr Hubon.”

“Yes! I mean…not…I’d never-”

Garak let him splutter himself into silence, and then. “Do you know anything of his whereabouts on that night?”

Docona was already shaking his head. “No. I…lost track of him at the station, after we’d said goodbye to Ulani and her mother. He…I don’t know where he’d have gone. Back to halls, I suppose, or one of his clubs. He’s a member of a few of them. He…wouldn’t know where I was, either. I- Would you tell your fiancée’s cousin, in my place?”

When _Garak_ had conducted an extramarital affair, even if it had not been his marriage, he’d been far too discreet to get arrested over it, but he was hardly about to say so now.

The rest of the interview was far less productive, and when Garak finally let Docona go, with a warning not to leave the city until the investigation was over, the first thing Garak did was comm the municipal peacekeepers’ station Docona had named on closer questioning. The East Lakeside one, which at least fit with his story – half the fleshpots of Masad were there, on the insalubrious eastern edge of the city. Still, the closer one drew to the lake, the more exclusive the brothels became, just like everything else. One would expect more economy from a student of Docona’s means, when not encumbered with the expectations of living up to his circle’s tastes.

The municipal peacekeeping force pre-dated the founding of the civilian investigative service, and had once served a similar function. And it had not given up those powers with terribly much grace. A quiet, seething rivalry existed between the two, and though the peacekeepers were bound to supply all information and assistance to the service when asked, they were often grudging in their efforts. This occasion proved no exception in that regard as, after two comm attempts that were met only with an instruction to hold, Garak finally lost patience and asked Ziyal to go in person.

It was wearing on towards dawn now, the lights fading out all across the city, and Garak looked out of his window at a Cardassia he no longer knew. He had been trained as a servant of the state, and a loyal one, and he had served as best he could all his adult life. Even in exile, he had bent his ear to any secrets that might come his way, held himself in readiness for any chance to show that his loyalty had never wavered. And even upon his return, when Cardassia had been in all the chaos of the first days of the new regime, he had sought nothing else but to serve. That was how he had been raised. That was all he had ever known. So, what was he supposed to do now all the definitions had changed? Now his years of obedience and loyalty were called tyranny and the betrayal that had forced his own father to cast him out was framed as service to the state? It had been that betrayal that had allowed for his return, when so many of those who had exiled him had now fled the Union themselves.

He would need to speak to Hubon at his first opportunity. There was something he was missing in this case, Garak could feel it, but he could not say yet what that could be.

There was a knock at the door, and Garak looked around.

“Come in.”

The door creaked open, to reveal a light-scaled woman in late middle age, dressed in the bright colours and garish flourishes of the lower merchant class. She looked nervous, which was about usual for those few members of the public who ever came into the former headquarters of the Obsidian Order.

“Are you Ajev Garak?”

“I am. And you are….?”

“Nalis Jorral,” the woman said, “The newsfeed said to talk to you. You have my ward in custody.”

“I see.” Garak went over to his desk and picked up the PADD. “Her legal name is?”

“Kasella Toran.”

“Age?”

“Twelve.”

Garak raised an eyebrow. “And your relation to the child? She’s clearly not your own.”

Jorral coughed. “My niece, by marriage. My late husband’s sister’s child. She’s a lazy, whining, troublesome girl, but I know my duty.”

Or rather, Garak translated, the child’s labour was too useful to give up. It was often the way. Indeed, for many years the worth of their labour was the only thing an orphan could rely on to keep them fed and clothed. Still, that removed the option of DNA testing to confirm Jorral’s story.

On the other hand, there were few motives to claim a child not your own on Cardassia. One could not dismiss the possibility of immoral intentions, but this case touched on murder, and claiming their only witness was one way to ensure her silence.

“I see,” he said. “Although that hardly explains what your…niece…was doing stowing away on a train bound for Lakarian when she was supposed to be under your care.”

Jorral sighed, and spread her hands. “I do my best with her, Ajev, but she’s an ungrateful child who will not learn her obligations to the people who have fed and housed and clothed her, and this isn’t the first time she’s run off. I’d send her to an orphanage, if my late husband hadn’t thought so highly of her poor mother.”

“I see.” Garak tapped the PADD a few times, formatting a request for all information, criminal or civil, on one Nalis Jorral.

The response that flashed up showed her as a lodging-house keeper who lived in one of the eastern districts of Masad. She was, indeed, widowed, and her record was clear enough to be reassuring. Still….it would be better to know for sure. Her husband’s records were far more partial – another casualty, Garak guessed, of the destruction of so much of Cardassia’s record system in the chaos of the revolution. No record of a sister, but that was hardly uncommon. The new government was still trying to find some way of remembering all those whom the Order had erased from all recorded knowledge, and many of them had been, in all other respects, quite unremarkable.

“You understand,” he said, looking up, “That she is not being held here. We were…able to secure the services of a civilian consultant-” Which certainly sounded better than ‘strong-armed into working with a particularly insufferable hobbyist-investigator’. “Who was able to offer a more suitable environment for a child than the service could, at least for the duration of this investigation.”

“…Investigation?” the woman said, sounding distinctly afraid now. “Oh…I was afraid of this. What has the foolish child done now?”

Garak raised a brow-ridge. “It isn’t a matter of what she has done. It’s what she may have seen.”

The woman looked even more nervous now, but was that concern for the usual fate of those who found out more than they needed to or a guilty conscience at work? Garak’s native cynicism inclined him towards the latter theory. But guilty about what?

Still…it seemed the best way to get his answers, at this point, would be to bring her to Bashir. If Kasella recognised the woman and wanted to go back with her, that would be one thing, though Garak doubted very much that that would happen. Sisko’s outburst at the house had certainly suggested as much. If she did not recognise the woman at all, she was likely involved with the murder, and seeking to eliminate the only witness who might identify the true culprit. If Kasella recognised her and responded badly…then Garak and Bashir would both be there to remove Jorral before any harm could come to the girl, and Garak might learn what it was that Jorral wanted to hide. It seemed an ideal solution.

“I believe, however,” he said, setting the PADD down on the desk, “That it may be possible for her to return home, if the Service can be satisfied that she can still be easily reached to testify in the event of a trial.”

It might be, of course, that Kasella would be simply resigned to returning to whatever her previous situation had been. There was no legal basis to prevent it, in the long term. In the short term, however…the investigation was still ongoing, and that might be proof enough, and then…then, Garak reminded himself, it was not his concern.

The streets were quieter at this hour. Not entirely quiet, of course, now that the curfews had been lifted and Cardassia’s people were at liberty to roam the streets at any hour of the day or night. As yet, few had thought to make use of that privilege. The people of Cardassia craved rules, structure, protection, even now, and Garak very much doubted that would change, no matter how many newfound rights and liberties were pressed upon them. When they reached the beautiful blue house in its quiet street, Jorral gave a startled little hiss.

“Well. If the girl hasn’t managed to fall on her feet.”

There was a distinctly resentful look on her face as she looked up at the house, and Garak added another detail to his suspicions about exactly what had driven Kasella Toran – if that was truly her name – to take so many risks in pursuit of escape.

Reka opened the door to them, and stopped at the sight of Jorral.

“Ajev,” she said warily, with a polite little dip of the head.

“Reka,” Garak returned, smiling harmlessly at her. She did not, it must be said, look especially convinced, but that, Garak thought, only showed good sense in a house like this. “This…individual…claims to be Kasella’s aunt.”

Reka, true to her training, did not turn a hair. “I see. This way, please, Ajev. Mr Bashir and the young lady are upstairs.”

They were shown up a long flight of stairs and into the same bright little sitting-room that Garak had seen that morning. Bashir was curled on the sofa when Garak entered, looking over Kasella’s shoulder at the book in her lap.

“-no, you’re close, but if you combine it with any one of about a hundred different heart medications- Ajev!”

“Mr Bashir,” Garak said, with a wide and insinuating smile. “I’m sorry to interrupt your evening.”

“Oh- No, it’s fine- How can I-?”

Kasella leapt up with a little cry, and Garak knew without looking that Jorral had just entered the room.

“Kasella, dear,” Jorral said, with an attempt at kindliness that might have fooled a particularly slow child, “I am so very pleased to see you well.”

“No, you’re not,” Kasella spat, edging away as Jorral drew closer, trying to put the sofa between herself and her aunt. “She’s not- You said I wouldn’t have to go back there until- Until you’d caught whoever it was!” _That_ was addressed to Bashir. “Please, I can’t-I won’t- You said-”

“That is right, ‘Zella,” Bashir said, resting a hand gently on the girl’s arm to steady her, and his voice was wintry when he turned back to Jorral. “Who are you, exactly?”

“Nalis Jorral. The poor child’s aunt.” The sickly sweetness in her voice was thick enough to choke on now, and she was speaking very slowly and clearly, as if Bashir might not understand her. “I am sorry she has put you to all this trouble, but, as you can see-”

“I won’t go with you!” Kasella snapped, her voice high and shrill with fear. “I- I won’t! I’ll live on the street first!”

“Nobody,” Bashir said, with finality, “Said anything about letting you live on the street. If you don’t want to return to your…aunt’s…home, you still have a room here for as long as you want it.”

“That’s not your decision to make! Ajev, tell this _off-worlder_ -”

Garak cleared his throat. “That _off-worlder_ was entrusted with Kasella’s care for the duration of this investigation. And, if you cannot provide more concrete proof that this child was previously under your guardianship than you have yet offered…”

“You didn’t _check_?” Bashir demanded, frowning.

“Regrettably, records of orphaned children are one area that was rather neglected by the previous government, and the present regime has yet to turn its attention to the problem.” Garak spread his hands. “It is an unfortunate situation, but there it is. In this case, however-”

He broke off. Jorral had made another grab for Kasella, who had half-ducked behind Bashir and seemed to be trying to hide behind him. Jorral reached out again, and Bashir caught her wrist.

“If you think you’re going to drag her out of here by force,” he said, very quietly, and for the first time there was real danger in his voice. “You might as well give up now. No-one in this room will allow that to happen.”

Garak widened his eyes at Bashir over Jorral’s shoulder, and got a raised eyebrow in answer. Ah. Apparently, Bashir counted him as part of that tally. Garak didn’t know if that trust was wilful naïveté or a better reading of his character than he was quite comfortable with, and told himself that all Bashir had meant was that Garak would not allow one of their only witnesses to be removed from custody by a woman they had not yet proved was not in league with their murderer. However unlikely that seemed.

Jorral was still craning, trying to peer around Bashir, and the look in her eyes was murderous. “Kasella, _think_. I know we don’t have comforts like these at home, but you’ll be around honest Cardassians, not…” she cast a hate-filled look at Bashir.

“Honest!” Kasella gave a wild sort of laugh. “You won’t- I won’t have _him_ near me!”

“Who?” Bashir asked, half-turning to look at her, but Kasella would speak no more.

Jorral, though, was not to be so easily thwarted. She turned back to Garak. “You said she could come home with me if-”

“I _said_ it might be possible for her to go home, if the Service could be satisfied of her continued cooperation,” Garak reminded her. “As you have presented no proof and the child herself will not cooperate, those conditions have not been met.”

Jorral drew herself up…and then seemed to realise that she would not win. “Don’t be fooled by her,” she said, shooting another venomous glare at Kasella, “She’s a devious child. She’ll have robbed you blind before she runs off again, you mark my words!”

“I’m sure I’ll survive it,” Bashir said dryly. “Get out.”

She did not, it must be said, go quietly, with a teakettle hiss of imprecations under her breath about Kasella, Bashir and the civilian investigative service, but that could be lived with. Garak accompanied her as far as the front door, less because it was his duty to prevent any retributive attempts on Bashir’s possessions, with which the man seemed quite shockingly unconcerned, than to give the former doctor and his young houseguest a few moments to themselves. Kasella had latched onto Bashir like a drowning swimmer catching hold of a buoy. It was very nearly touching, or it would be if Garak did not know it would not last. However attached Bashir was becoming to the girl, or she to him, even an orphan would never be trusted to the care of an off-worlder on a permanent basis. It had been a difficult enough matter to justify even for the length of the investigation.

When he returned upstairs, Kasella was still breathing irregularly, although she’d recovered herself enough to sit down again next to Bashir, talking to him quietly and earnestly, and clinging onto his wrist as someone who had just tumbled off a cliff would cling to a rescuer.

“-I see. That’s a great help, ‘Zella. How many of you were there?”

Garak hovered in the doorway, watching the scene. Neither Bashir nor Kasella seemed to have noticed him yet.

“…it changed,” Kasella muttered. “They’d go missing, in the night. You got the strap for asking where anyone went. I was going to go soon too. Everyone knew it, ‘cause I’m getting big.”

Bashir’s face was ashen. “…they were all about your age when they disappeared, then?”

“Most of them. Because they were too big to be worth their keep. Nal got rid of them. _He_ saw to that.”

“And- Can you tell me who ‘he’ is?” Bashir asked, brushing a soothing hand over the girl’s crest, smoothing down the filaments there.

Kasella’s mouth moved soundlessly. Even that much seemed to be costing her a great effort. “I- He-” she doubled over, suddenly and startlingly, crumpling to the carpet and retching, over and over again.

Bashir was on his feet and at her side again in a moment. “’Zel. ‘Zella. Stop trying, all right? Ajev, there’s a bucket in the kitchen, first door on your left downstairs. ‘Zella? Can you breathe in for me? Through your nose, as deep as you can-”

Garak half-startled. He hadn’t thought- Well. Bashir was more observant than he liked to appear, Garak had always known that. The unnerving thing was that it was so easy to forget. Bashir had a way about him that made you _want_ to dismiss him, was the thing. It was hard to put a finger on precisely how, but whatever it was, it was probably the single most dangerous quality the man had yet displayed.

“No…it’s fine. I can…” Kasella shuddered, and drew herself upright. “I- Sorry about the mess.”

“It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have pushed you to talk.”

“On the contrary,” Garak put in, “This…episode…may have offered more information than the name would have. Is there anything else you are so prevented from telling us?”

“I…” Kasella shuddered. “I don’t know. I’ve never done that before.”

“Told anyone, or suffered that kind of reaction?” Garak asked.

“Either. I- I don’t know.” Kasella looked down at her hands, and at the puddle of vomit on the floor next to her. “I didn’t know it would- would do that.”

Bashir nodded. “All right. Was there anything you were specifically told not to tell people?”

A shake of the head from Kasella, and Garak met Bashir’s eyes.

The worst of it was, he knew, that even if he presented this to his superiors like a riding hound bringing home a dead vole, it would be dismissed. No evidence but the word of an urchin girl already implicated in another offence, an accusation against a respectable lodging-house keeper…he would be laughed out of the room if he even mooted the idea, and barred from further investigations, and even after five years’ loyal service to the new regime, Garak was being watched closely enough to make any private investigations into this case almost certain to be discovered, if he went about them in such a fashion as would produce admissible evidence for the courts. Bashir, however, suffered from no such restrictions.

He knew it, and he thought Bashir did too, could see it in the faint, half-bitter twist of Bashir’s mouth. It was a look that said, without any words at all, that if no-one else was going to do a necessary job, then _he_ would, and damn the rest of them for not wanting to be bothered with it. Garak found himself wondering guiltily how often Bashir had worn that look, in his former employment. It suited him well enough that it ought to have been habitual.

“The name the woman gave at the station was Nalis Jorral,” Garak said evenly, not looking away from Bashir’s face. “She runs a boarding house in the east of the city. I can give you the address.”

Bashir quirked an eyebrow. “Thank you, Ajev. I think I’ll take you up on that. As for the rest of it…” he glanced at Kasella. “You aren’t going back there so long as I can prevent it. And I think I might be able to, at that. I never thought I’d say this, but thank _god_ the Cardassian state doesn’t think orphans’ paperwork is worth bothering with.”

“That may change yet,” Garak reminded him, “There has been some discussion of the idea, in progressive circles…”

“Then let’s hope they don’t force it through before the end of this case.” Bashir said, straightening up. “And now, unless you want to help with the cleaning up, Ajev…is that everything?”

A hundred questions were there on the tip of Garak’s tongue, but…well. To ask, at this point, would be an admission that he could not find out for himself, and that would never do.

When he got back to headquarters, it was to find Ziyal had already returned. Hardly unexpected, and nor was the information she had brought him. According to the peacekeepers, Tujes Docona had indeed been arrested on charges of solicitation on the night of the elder Madam Gillot’s murder. An unfortunate night twice over for Ulani Gillot, if she did not already know.

Briefly, he outlined what had just happened to Ziyal, and watched her grow pale beneath the thin scales of her face.

“…you trust Bashir to investigate this, then?” she asked, once he’d finished, frowning. “It isn’t like you to leave something like this up to someone else.”

Garak paused. “I am not in the habit of _trusting_ , Kalajev. But…I am curious to see what Bashir will do with it.”

It was a probable truth. It was a sentiment Garak might well have felt, under other circumstances. Now, however, he could confidently say that if Bashir had not gathered evidence, secured the criminal and called Garak to collect the lot with the air of a performer waiting for his round of applause within the week, Garak would lose all faith in his knowledge of sentient nature.

“Still curious, sir?” Ziyal asked, her brow-ridges inching up.

Garak hummed softly. “…yes, I think so. There are questions I would like answers for. You know that he was in Starfleet?”

“Jake- Mr Sisko mentioned it once.” Ziyal coloured.

“Hm. And did Mr Sisko share any further insights? Say, into the reasons behind Bashir’s discharge?”

“No. He was here before that – since the end of their war with the Klingons.” Ziyal was frowning now. “He doesn’t show any signs of having been injured seriously enough to warrant a full discharge, though…”

“I can say, with certainty, that he is not here because of injury.” Garak shrugged, affecting indifference. “It is something to ask your Mr Sisko, perhaps.”

“He isn’t _my_ anything,” Ziyal reminded him. “But…I will ask. You aren’t worried about Mr Bashir, are you?”

Garak blinked at her, all innocence. “What a remarkable question! What reason do you think I have for worry?”

Another long pause, and then. “…he’s being _kept_ ,” Ziyal said simply. “Like a pet. I- That isn’t fair on anyone. Maybe he chose it and now he’s trapped, or maybe he didn’t. But he’s living at someone’s mercy however it happened.”

Ziyal, of all people, would know. Garak had not, as yet, been able to find much information to indicate the identity of Ziyal’s father, which was in itself suggestive of the rank he must have held during the Occupation, but the story was a common one. It was not hard to deduce those factors he did not know for fact.

“So it would appear,” Garak allowed, and drew the data key out from his tunic pocket. “We are not yet in possession of all the facts.”

Garak was not fool enough to use the equipment of the service for this investigation, and the minutes of tedious paperwork, making sure that everything was accounted for, that he had not taken a single liberty beyond the bounds of his office. Those with less politically dubious pasts, Garak knew, could afford a few lapses in the paperwork. He could not.

All told, it was near daybreak when he finally left his cramped office and took the public trolley back to his boarding-house, the key burning in his pocket through every jolt and rattle.

His dinner was sitting cold on the table when he got in, a reproachful note from his landlady about his odd hours tucked under the plate, but he paid it no mind. When he powered up the computer, he found another encrypted message from Pythas waiting for him, and opened it, hoping for answers. It yielded none.

_Regnar._

_I don’t know how you found out about Bashir, but you were right. They_ are _hiding something. Bashir allegedly waived his right to a trial, but there should at least be some record of his offence. I found none._

_I have included the means for you to contact an old acquaintance on Terok Nor. You may still be familiar with him. He is certainly familiar with Bashir._

There was no signature. Pythas had never needed to leave one.

Garak read the whole message twice to be sure he understood correctly. One did not waive one’s right to a trial and then expect leniency. Why, then, was Bashir still free? Or- Had this been his sentence? Exile, not imprisonment. He had not thought the Federation made much use of the practice. If Bashir had fled justice, it would have been a simple matter for the Federation to have him returned to them, with Cardassia’s present government’s eagerness to prove itself a friend to the Federation, following the events that had led to the brief Federation-Klingon war that had ended just a few scant months before Bashir had arrived on Cardassia. Pythas was right. This was a deeper puzzle than Garak had believed. He noted down and saved the contact details for this old acquaintance of Pythas’, deleted the message, and slotted in the data key.

There was far more there than just Bashir’s financial records, and all of it might yet be useful, but…but, Ziyal had been right. Bashir was not a free man, though the chains that bound him were chains of latinum. If Garak was going to find any hint of who it was that held those chains, the money trail was going to be the thing that led him there.

Now, with time and liberty to look as long as he pleased, he could make more of the information laid out before him. There was, now he had liberty to look, a marked difference before and after the move to Masad. Bashir had lived modestly while in Lakarian. Indeed, he had lived like…well, like a man without a lek to his name, living on the charity of those who had already cast him off. The expenditures for food and clothing were bare-bones, the one month’s rent paid upon his arrival in the city made even Garak’s fairly modest boarding-house seem palatial by comparison. And then, all at once, this sober-minded exile had got it into his head to move to Masad, take in a lodger, start solving mysteries and turn spendthrift. It was, Garak had to admit, hardly the most probable of turns. He toyed idly with the notion that someone had slipped in a ringer, and the ‘Bashir’ he had come to know in Masad was no such person, but an agent of Federation intelligence planted to…to do what? To torment a middle-aged Ajev whose days of being vitally important to the Cardassian state were long behind him? Hardly. There was no suggestion in the financial records of what had caused the switchover, but that was hardly remarkable, except…except…it was not the most obvious expenditure in the file. Indeed, Bashir seemed to have gone out of his way to hide it, before it was dug out from the depths of the file by the data-key. It was, however, an expenditure greater than Bashir’s living expenses for that whole first month in Lakarian put together. A payment…no, a donation…to a free clinic in Masad run by. Hm. Run by Doctor Kelas Parmak, in point of fact. Precisely how well was Bashir acquainted with the dissident? Now that Garak looked closer, though, he saw that he was not the first to take notice of this particular transaction. The payment had not gone through. Or rather, it had been denied at the source, by Bashir's unknown patrons, whoever they were. Why, though? Jealousy at a perceived romantic rival? Suspicion that Bashir was outsourcing his obligations?

Garak closed the tab, and opened another – incoming communications. There were not terribly many from before Bashir had come to Masad. A few friends and contacts, including one or two names Garak recognised…and, on the same date that the payment to Parmak’s clinic had been denied, an encrypted message with no listed sender.

_Remember your limits, Doctor._

It was not difficult to decrypt. One line, and the encryption was not deep. But no amount of decryption would uncover the sender. It was all Garak could do to uncover the region of space that had sent that message. _Remember your limits._ What limits were those? And who was it within the Federation that was so determined that Bashir should keep to them?

Garak had no answers to that, and no matter how many files he scanned through – including a rather intriguing retelling of that first case that seemed to be Jake Sisko’s work, although, as promised, Bashir’s name was nowhere to be found – the data-key revealed no more.

A crime, details redacted. The right to trial, waived. A measure of freedom and a generous pay-off…but the money was a fetter too, after its fashion, and there were conditions attached to that freedom that Garak did not yet understand. Something was being concealed here. Something the Federation would break all their own codes to keep secret. And there was Bashir, at the heart of it all.

How was Garak supposed to resist a lure like that? 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter than usual this time, I know, but real life is getting in the way as per usual. Hopefully this will at least tide everyone over.

It did not take terribly much searching to turn up a file on Kadit Hubon. Of the suspects before them, he seemed the likeliest, especially now Garak had uncovered the terms of Madam Gillot the elder’s will. Never mind the jewels that had been taken on the night of the murder – _that_ was only the least part of what Hubon had stood to gain from this particular murder. By the standards of the political class, it was not a great fortune. But for a member of the professional classes, Alin Gillot had been comfortably well-off, and she had left every lek of that to her nephew. More than enough to pay off Hubon’s debts, which, while not as pressing as his friend’s, were still mounting up at an alarming rate. And easily enough to leave Ulani Gillot entirely without recourse. Gillot the younger was employed, according to her own file, as a clerk for the Culture Ministry. It was a respectable line of work, but for a single individual without family behind them, it offered a salary barely enough to keep body and soul together, even with the increases in pay that had come with the regime change. Between her mother’s death, her own sudden disinheritance and her fiancé’s reduced prospects, adultery, and general haplessness, Garak was almost beginning to pity Ulani Gillot.

Hubon was, from his file, quite a suspiciously blameless young man. Indeed, for an inveterate gambler, it was hard to tell when or where he had lost so much money. One would expect at least a few petty arrests, for drunken misdemeanours or the usual array of petty student pranks. But, no. Docona’s file was thick with such incidents, leading Garak to suspect that the desperate remorse he had seen in his interview with the young man was one part of a cycle, rather than a sincere display of meaningful shame. But Hubon had no adult encounters with the law to his name, despite known association with quite a fast-living set of young people. A man with some experience in evading the law, then? Or- Hubon the elder had risen to become an archon since the regime change. A man of influence. Did Kadit Hubon hope to escape justice on his father’s coattails? He would not, Garak had to admit, be the first.

Hubon was known to frequent a number of the new ‘clubs’ that had sprung up across Cardassia since the regime change five years before. Garak himself did not see the point of such institutions, but then, neither of his professions were known for encouraging sociability. Whatever the appeal of them was, the younger generation flocked to them for company and an atmosphere of apparent safety and privacy. It would have made for a truly wonderful device for information-gathering, if only the law still allowed for such things. As it was, the organisations seemed to serve much the same purposes as places like Bamarren had once done, allowing connections to be formed and a private, unspoken pecking-order to develop. There were clubs for every profession and level of society, and the younger generation had even coined a word, ‘clubbable’, to describe a likeable, sociable sort of person. It made Garak’s scales itch, to know of such a resource and know that he could not exploit it, but there it was.

The itch only grew worse, now that he had been denied permission to make an arrest without more compelling evidence than Kasella’s testimony to link either Hubon or Docona to the murder on the train. He had not used to need permission to make arrests, in the old days. Or to conduct interrogations. Indeed, in his young day it had been common practice to pluck a passer-by off the street and bring them in for interrogation as a training exercise, to see how quickly a young agent could find every secret, every crime, every private indiscretion there was to find. Garak had, he recalled, been rather good at that particular exercise. Now, he was obliged to ask permission, even when others of his rank were not. It was _maddening_ , after five years of loyal service, hardly ever bending the rules. But it could, he knew, have been worse. He might well have never been permitted to come home at all, have been sentenced to live out his days on Terok Nor, under Bajoran authority, surrounded by people who hated and feared him not for the crimes he had committed, but the simple fact of his existence. He had agreed to be watched, if it meant continuing in Cardassia’s service. He had not expected the observation to _hinder_ that service as much as it had done.

It did not take so very long to reach the Gettle Club. It was perhaps two streets away from the university, tucked away in the old quarter of the city, and was frequented largely by students – and well-heeled students, at that – and it was the sort of place that took Garak invoking the name of the service for the doorman to even grudgingly allow him entry. So, of course, the first thing he saw when he reached the barroom was Julian Bashir, leaning casually against the bar and deep in conversation with Kadit Hubon, the red of his coat standing out like a drop of blood in the dim yellow light of the club. Garak really didn’t know why he’d expected to find anything else.

Bashir did not seem to have noticed Garak, but that, Garak was starting to learn, didn’t mean anything, and the sly, knowing smile that spread across Bashir’s face might as easily be Garak’s doing as Hubon’s. Hubon was standing far, far too close to Bashir now, Garak could not help but notice, and for all Bashir’s words about not having much interest in young or callow lovers, he was hardly pushing Hubon away.

“-don’t think I’m guilty, do you?” Hubon was saying, with a creditable enough show of offence, when Garak got within earshot of them. Even so, he had to strain his ears to hear. It was a rare man, Garak reflected, who would use a kinswoman’s murder as grounds for a flirtation. Not that he had not done the same before, and would not do so now, if he had any family left that still acknowledged him, but it was the principle of the thing.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Bashir replied. There was a burst of laughter from a nearby table, and Garak hissed his annoyance as Bashir and Hubon’s conversation was drowned out by the din. He drew a little closer, as surreptitiously as a middle-aged man in a roomful of students could hope to, and as the laughter died away, he heard Hubon’s voice again.

“-was afraid Tujes would find out and lose interest. Maybe Aunt Alin got to her after all – she never did care much for Tujes.”

Well. Wasn’t _that_ intriguing. Tujes Docona was not the only one of this pair with secrets. Had Ulani Gillot known the terms of her mother’s will, then? It was something to ask. If they had both known, Garak would be able to present it to his superiors as an argument to allow for Hubon’s arrest. Or, if it had not been the will…what? The simplest explanations were not always the most accurate, but they were often the best place to start asking questions.

Garak drew level with the bar, behind Bashir, and saw the moment that Hubon noticed him. Faint confusion showed first, and then recognition, and fear. Garak smiled, slow and satisfied. It was a petty satisfaction, but satisfaction nonetheless, to see Hubon’s neck-ridges flatten down in apprehension as he drew away, subtly but unmistakeably, from Bashir’s side.

“It’s Mr Hubon, isn’t it?” Garak said, employing what he had come to think of as his customer service smile, the one he had developed during those long years of tedious stitchery on Terok Nor, under the late Gul Dukat’s clumsy command. “I am sorry to interrupt this…interlude…but there are some questions that must be asked. Mr Bashir, your presence will not be required.”

“Of course,” Bashir said easily, making Garak’s head snap around to get a better look at him. He had been expecting at least a token protest. “Until next time, then, Ajev.” Garak deliberately did not watch Bashir slip out of sight. Whatever it was he had come for, he had got it, and Garak would enjoy teasing the information out of him in time. For now, he had a much less enjoyable task before him.

When he turned to Hubon, the man was gripping the bar as if it were all that kept him upright.

“I don’t know anything,” he said harshly. “I don’t- For mercy’s sake, my own _aunt_?”

Garak raised a brow-ridge. “I have not yet accused you.”

“‘Yet’,” Hubon repeated. “Has the state decided it can do without me, _Ajev_?”

“That has yet to be seen. Tell me, where were you on the night of your aunt’s murder?”

Hubon was bristling now. “I don’t believe this! And,” he added, struck, “I don’t have to tell you. If you had any real proof against me, I’d be in a cell now and you’d probably have brought out the lead-lined hoses-”

They would not, in fact, and if Garak had ever needed to resort to such methods he would not have deserved his position as Tain’s second. There were ways to extract a confession that left no telltale marks, and those had always been Garak’s specialty.

“-but you don’t, do you? I’m just the most convenient person to blame!”

“If that were the case, I should hardly be interviewing you now.” Garak let his smile widen. “If that were the case, evidence against you would already have been manufactured, and no amount of protestations would matter. If the service still operated in such a fashion, it would not matter if you spoke to me or not. You may be grateful that it does not.”

Hubon’s mouth twisted. “So they keep saying. But here you are. Was it the Army of Occupation or the Obsidian Order, _Ajev_ Garak? Neither of them was exactly known for their concern for the rule of law.”

Garak gave a soft huff of breath. “ _If_ I had been either, I should have been a miserable failure not to have advanced high enough to find myself barred from government service by my age.”

It had been Ghemor’s compromise. The Order was not something one chose, by and large, and he’d had one daughter and one nephew in the Order himself. The hands of the lower levels of the Order’s membership were never clean – one could not leave Bamarren with clean hands – but they were permitted to remain in Cardassia’s service. The higher ranks had not, by and large, been so lucky. Affiliation with the dissident movement was one way to earn exemption. Garak’s own exile had been another, and even then, they were watched so closely that any service they could do was strictly limited. Garak would never advance past the rank of Ajev, he knew, though no-one had ever been so vulgar as to say as much outright.

“Don’t try and bluff your way with me! Half the Service was one or the other, even if they were the dregs of both! Do you honestly believe people don’t know? I don’t have to answer to you unless you arrest me, and unless you want to arrest me now, I’m leaving. Clearly they’ll let _anyone_ in this place!”

If he had truly believed a word of that, Garak reflected, he was surely a fool to have been so brazen about it. That was the problem with the younger generation. They had come of age in a world where such things were not only safe, but to some extent expected, and it had left them with a woefully underdeveloped sense of self-preservation. Even so, Hubon went a few paces, then stopped and glared as if daring Garak to arrest him, and then strode away at, Garak was gratified to see, a markedly faster clip than could be called entirely casual.

It was entirely possible that that response had been injured innocence. But it was hard to avoid noticing that Hubon had never said where he was that night, and their list of suspects was growing short. Darel could be largely discounted, simply by having been on the train when the disappearances were noted – Madam Gillot’s injuries had not been inflicted in the space of five minutes at a standstill – and Ulani Gillot likewise. Docona was desperate enough to resort to stealing the jewels, but his whereabouts that night were a matter of public record. Hubon had motive, as Madam Gillot’s sole heir. He was reluctant to reveal his location on the night of the murder. He certainly had the means to transport himself, quietly and privately, from the desert back to Masad. But his father was an archon, and even in this new Cardassia, that stood for something. They needed to prove this for certain if they were to have any hope of a conviction, and definite evidence either way was rather thin on the ground. And, of course, the train guards and search parties had destroyed most of the evidence inadvertently before forensics even got there. It was a wonder he and Bashir had been able to uncover anything at all.

Speaking of the devil, Bashir fell into step at Garak’s side as he left the bar, looking serious for what might be the first time in their entire acquaintance. Or- No. Not the first time. He had been serious last night. It hadn’t occurred to him, in the moment, but he had seen Bashir less solemn at murder scenes than he had been with Kasella after her ordeal. The living, it seemed, mattered far more to Bashir than the dead. Or perhaps it was simply that he had grown attached to Kasella, in a way he was never afforded with their victims.

“I have something for you,” Bashir said quietly. “Not a name, yet. But Doctor Parmak was willing to make a house call, and he knew the methods behind what was done to ‘Zella.”

Garak blinked slowly. “And what did the good doctor have to say?”

“That he’d only ever seen those particular brain patterns in a few patients before.” A pause, and then. “Tell me, Ajev. How much did you know about the Obsidian Order?”

Garak did not stop in his tracks or look around dramatically – he was not an amateur – but it was hard to control the twitch of a brow-ridge that followed that query.

“Very little, I’m sure,” he lied. “If I had been a member, I should hardly occupy my current post, I’m sure.”

“Ajev- Please. Whoever did this to her, they used Obsidian Order equipment and Obsidian Order methods. I’m…out of my depth, with this. I need someone who knows what to look for. Now, if you know _anything_ , Garak-”

“Precisely what equipment and methods were you thinking of, Mr Bashir?” Garak asked, his voice light and precise and wintry, and Bashir’s face went momentarily slack with relief.

He recovered himself quickly, and offered a tired, grateful smile. This close, it was easy to see the faint shadows beneath his eyes, though he wore them well. “I have a skimmer waiting, we can talk in there. Can I offer you a lift back to your headquarters, Ajev?” he added, with a pale imitation of his usual teasing tone.

Garak smiled back, bright and false and friendly. “I should be very grateful if you did.”

The skimmer was every bit as sleek and fast and comfortable as it had looked that day in the desert, and it only made Garak question the motives of Bashir’s mysterious financial backers more. What patron would deny a donation to a clinic for the poor, but allow for spending on such fripperies as this? Garak did not know, and did not care for it. He suspected, though he had no evidence of this but that odd shift in spending after the donation had been denied, that Bashir did not either.

As soon as the doors were closed and the skimmer had risen off the ground, Bashir spoke.

“Doctor Parmak was able to identify what was done to Kasella. It’s a process he claims was designed by one Mindur Timot, if that name means anything to you.”

“I can’t say that it does,” Garak lied. This was worse than he had been led to believe. Timot had been a favourite of Tain’s, much as Garak and Pythas had been. Garak himself had been a recipient of Timot’s attentions, and bore the marks of it to this day, in the odd streak of masochism he had developed since, and the apparent indifference to pain that had eased so many of his days on Terok Nor. Furthermore, only a select group had known enough of Timot’s methods, his cunning devices, the processes he had developed, to be able to use them. For one of them to show up in a half-starved orphan girl out here in the provinces...either Timot’s work had spread to the black market, or they had stumbled on a far deeper plot than either he or Bashir had realised when Kasella was found by the rail line.

“That wasn’t nearly up to your usual standards of deception, Ajev. I’m disappointed in you.” Bashir drummed his fingers on the steering column. “There’s an implant. Embedded in the back of her neck. It can’t be safely removed without access to much better facilities than Doctor Parmak’s, and recovery will be an involved process in any case. ‘Zella refuses to go to hospital – she’s worried that the people who did this to her will find her there, and if they have access to Obsidian Order technology, she has every reason to be worried. A friend of mine has taken a room at Jorral’s boarding-house – I’d have gone myself, but I’m rather conspicuous – but without some way of _proving_ a link between this device and her caretakers, it’s the word of an off-worlder against that of a Cardassian citizen, and I don’t much like those chances.”

“The Obsidian Order was not much in the habit of implanting its most secret technologies in street urchins,” Garak said dryly.

Bashir glanced over and widened his eyes. “Ah. So, this was a _highly classified_ piece of technology. Thank you, Ajev, that is helpful. Not one that would easily make its way onto the black market, do you think?”

“Certainly not without someone who knew how to implant it. Would you say this looked like expert work?”

Bashir looked back at the road. “I can ask Doctor Parmak-”

“I am asking you, _Doctor_ Bashir.”

Bashir did start at that, a little, and then his grip loosened slightly on the steering column. “Not anymore,” he said quietly, avoiding Garak’s eyes. “Or didn’t that appear on your background checks?”

He stared out at the buildings falling away beneath them, looking for a moment at once far older and far younger than Garak knew him to be. It was an oddly uncomfortable thing to see, Bashir without the bravado that let him sail through the world unencumbered by rules and regulations, and Garak was not altogether sure he liked it.

He raised a brow-ridge, trying to recapture some of the ease of their previous arguments and failing. “Regardless, knowledge, once gained, is not as easily lost as the paperwork to declare one has it. I ask again – what did you make of it?”

Bashir’s mouth twisted. “Then, no, I wouldn’t call it expert work. I wouldn’t even call it _reasonable_ work. The scar was plain enough on the back of her neck – that’s how we found it. No particular effort to make a neat job of it, and no great concern for her life, either. There was enough anatomical knowledge for them not to sever anything vital while they were fiddling about with someone’s spinal column, but not enough that whoever did it ought to have been performing surgeries.”

“Trial and error?” Garak suggested.

“I don’t know, Ajev, have you had a rash of dead orphans recently?” Bashir snapped, his fingers tightening on the steering column as they banked a corner at an entirely inadvisable speed. Speed limits were, Garak noted, apparently among the many rules of civilised society that Bashir had seen fit to leave behind him with his Starfleet career, his medical license, and any pretence of taking things seriously.

“Not that anyone has noticed,” he said smoothly. “And whatever you may believe of the current state of Cardassia’s facilities for such children, we _would_ notice.”

“Would you? Sometimes I wonder. You don’t really seem to document them, once they’re out of the orphanages. Sometimes it seems to be about the only thing the Cardassian state _doesn’t_ document.”

“We keep a record of names, ages, and whether or not they are in state care. There has been a push for more thorough records.”

Bashir snorted. “Oh, well, _that’s_ all right then. What do you do when any of these kids reaches adulthood with basically no documentation of education or previous experience?”

“If they are in school, the school will have records of their attendance. If they are not…then most of the work for which they are qualified is not of a sort which requires many records.”

Which meant either menial labour or enlistment in the Cardassian Guard, in most cases. Those whose families supported them might hope for better, but by and large, that was the limit of an orphan’s prospects. Good service might offer some opportunity to rise – one could be promoted through the ranks of the Guard, or rise to a position of authority over other workers - but even that would be a far, far harder struggle for a person alone. It was a fate that might easily have been Garak’s own, and he did not care to think on it as far as possible, but there it was.

Bashir drew in a hiss through his teeth. “And this is accepted?”

“There are debates in the Detapa Council for extending documentation further – as you might know, if you followed the state newsfeed.”

Bashir’s mouth twitched up at the corners in something that was almost, but not entirely, completely unlike a smile. “I probably should,” he agreed. “But- Well. Best to avoid temptation.” He ploughed on before Garak could ask for clarification. “All I need is information on these devices – what they were used for, who would know how to programme and implant one, and whether they can be obtained or produced easily now, given suitable instructions.”

“Why, Mr Bashir! One would think you imagined that the service had nothing better to do than dispatch its officers to service your whims!”

“Does it?” Bashir retorted. “Obsidian Order technology turning up on petty thieves and street kids isn’t worrying at all, then? I don’t have the…background…to give any specific names, and since the Obsidian Order wiped basically all its records before it imploded, I don’t know anyone else I can go to.”

“And yet you imagine I might-”

“Yes.” Bashir rubbed his eyes. “Please don’t- I’m not going to make trouble over it. Whatever you did, I can’t do anything to you. I’m about as powerless as it’s possible for someone like me to be. I just need to know.”

Now _there_ was an odd turn of phrase. ‘Someone like me’. Was this just more of Bashir’s absolute conviction of his exemption from all normal rules, or a suggestion of just what the circumstances were that had seen Bashir sent away to a comfortable life in exile rather than imprisoned or executed for a crime serious enough to see him discharged from Starfleet in the deepest possible disgrace. Well. It was worth looking into.

Garak pursed lips. “I see. You understand, of course, that even if I had been a member of the Obsidian Order, I would not have known every device ever used as a part of the Order’s work.”

“I know. I’m not expecting miracles, Ajev. But a man in your position surely has a few friends still who might know more. Have you interviewed Ulani again yet?”

Garak blinked. He almost wanted to ask what Ulani Gillot had to do with the Obsidian Order, but- No.

“Not as yet. You have spoken to her?”

“Not since she left my house.” Bashir’s smile was back now, as smugly knowing as ever it had been, as if he were laughing at a joke no-one else had seen yet. It should not have been at all an appealing expression, and Garak looked away, irritated by his own response. “Did you learn anything useful from Hubon?”

“Not as yet,” Garak echoed, smiling enigmatically. Truthfully, that hadn’t been the point. If he had wanted information, he would have approached Hubon anonymously, as a listening ear with an honest face in a bar far less exclusive than this. This defensiveness only served to make Hubon look more guilty, and he would look guiltier still when Garak petitioned his superiors for the right to make an arrest and interrogate the man on his own terms. Even under Tain, it had been the _threat_ of force more than the reality of it that Garak had favoured, and _that_ , at least, was still available to him. “I might ask you the same. Unless this was simply a social visit.”

Bashir grinned, “I’m sure he would say it was. But as for what I learnt…you know he was his aunt’s sole heir, I’m assuming?”

“ _That_ much is a matter of public record. He told you this himself?”

“Oh, yes.” Bashir dove sharply to avoid a flight of mura birds, and Garak surreptitiously tightened his grip on the double seat of the skimmer. “Apparently Madam Gillot had been threatening it for months. Ever since Ulani Gillot took up with our friend Docona.”

He cast a significant look at Garak, who returned a pitying smile.

“So, you suspect Docona?”

Bashir hummed softly. “You have to admit, he has more motive for stealing the jewellery than Hubon does – why steal a few trinkets when you’re set to inherit the lot?”

“But rather less opportunity,” Garak said, unavoidably smug. “Or hadn’t you heard? Tujes Docona spent the night of the murder in one of the municipal peacekeepers’ holding cells.”

Bashir blinked at him. “…really?” he said, sounding honestly fascinated for some reason presumably best known to himself. “And – you’ve confirmed this with the peacekeepers?” Garak raised a brow-ridge and Bashir winced. “…sorry. Had to check. But- Well. That _does_ put a different complexion on things.”

Garak sniffed. “Hardly.” Docona and Hubon both fit Kasella’s description of the man she had seen. Both were in need of money, and while Hubon had more to gain from the murder and less to gain from the theft…one did not beat a woman the way Madam Gillot had been beaten over a few baubles. And while Hubon did not seem particularly intelligent, after the exhibition he had made of his refusal to cooperate back in the bar, any fool could think of making a murder look like a robbery. Ulani Gillot had claimed to have been attacked from behind and never seen her attacker’s face, and that too might have been a precaution. It was all circumstantial evidence, Garak knew, but while the law of the new republic might say ‘innocent until proven guilty’, the Cardassian people did not forget so quickly that ‘accused’ and ‘guilty’ had been synonymous until five years ago. This whole case was much the same sort of grubby, tedious little murder that happened every day in most major cities, that Garak had been dealing with every day for five years, desert setting aside. And it was not nearly so interesting, or so worrying, as the thought of Obsidian Order secrets in the hands of the general public. “You have the schematics for this…device…of Doctor Parmak’s?”

“It’s not really _his_ device, as all he did was locate it, but we were able to get a few useful details about it from the scans.” Bashir nodded at the glove compartment. “There should be a data stick in there. Good luck with your investigations, Ajev Garak.”

“That seems slightly- Ah.” They had been descending now for some minutes, he realised, so smoothly Garak hadn’t noticed, after their breakneck pace on the way over. He hadn’t _noticed_. He’d been too caught up in bickering with Bashir to notice, too busy letting his eyes linger on the way Bashir’s long fingers flexed against the steering column and the fine long line of his throat. Bashir didn’t seem to have noticed, but Bashir never _seemed_ to notice anything. It was…something like sleight of hand, even when Garak knew from hard experience just how observant Bashir was. It had been a foolish enough mistake at their first meeting. It was inexcusable now.

Bashir smiled again, the bright, blinding one that was not entirely false. “I’ll call you when I have more about our case,” he said, “The official one, I mean. This has changed things – thanks for telling me about Docona. I’m going to need to ask a few more questions. If I’m right-” he cut himself off, that dazzling smile shrinking into something smaller, sheepish, nearly real. “Never mind. I’ll tell you once I’m sure.”

“Then you might not have begun at all,” Garak said, a faintly peevish edge creeping into his voice.

“Turnabout is fair play, Ajev!” Bashir reminded him, rather theatrically. Affected, Garak thought. And then- Yes. ‘Theatrical’ was the word. Like Bashir’s holoprogramme-set home and stagey gestures and larger-than-life persona. Always playing to the back rows. Had Garak ever really _met_ Julian Bashir? What truths might he find behind those dark eyes in the sterile brightness of an interrogation chamber, where there could be no secrets?

Garak smiled, slow and cruel, the smile of the interrogator, the Son of Tain. “I have never understood the Federation obsession with ‘fairness’.”

Bashir snorted. “We hardly _invented_ the concept, you know. Hebitian writings are about as concerned with the concept of fair value as anything the Federation ever produced!”

“Why, Mr Bashir! This _is_ a surprise! I was not aware you had any great interest in Cardassian culture.”

Bashir gave a careless sort of shrug. “Parmak recommended me a few of the old Hebitian epics, and since, as the late Madam Gillot was so kind as to point out, I have nothing _but_ free time these days…”

“You might apply for a work permit,” Garak said, watching Bashir’s face. “I understand that Starfleet medical training is thorough enough that a capable doctor should be able to retrain in less than a year.”

Bashir’s mouth twisted. “…no,” he said dully. “I can’t. I- Who on this planet would let an off-worlder treat them in any case? We’re not exactly popular around here.”

It was an obvious evasion, but not an untrue one, and so Garak let it pass without comment.

“Anyway,” Bashir pressed on, with a sort of forced, desperate cheerfulness. “If I did that, who’d help you with your cases, Ajev?”

 _That_ , on the other hand, really was a step too far.

“I had hoped I had made my opinion of your ‘help’ quite clear to you already, Mr Bashir,” Garak said tartly.

Bashir grinned. It had been an irritating expression before, but now…now, Garak could see the trick of it, the slight distance behind the eyes. “Well, at least you aren’t claiming you don’t need the assistance anymore. Good luck with Gillot the younger, Ajev. I expect her testimony will be _fascinating_.”


End file.
